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OPENING EXERCISES 
FOR SCHOOLS 



BY 

THOMAS E. SANDERS 

AUTHOR OF 

Management and Methods" "Twenty Talks to Teachers' 

"An Outline Guide to Civil Government" 

"Five Hundred Thought Problems" 

"An Outline of Arithmetic" 



A. FLANAGAN COMPANY 
CHICAGO 



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COPTBIGHT 1906 AND 1910 
BT 

THOMAS E. SANDEES 



CC1A278992 






Introduction 



In nearly every well organized school a short period is 
set apart for opening exercises each morning. * It will vary 
from five to fifteen minutes and on special occasions it 
may run even longer.) It should never be long enough for 
pupils to grow tired or restless, J It must be made inter- 
esting. I It must recall the wandering minds of the pupils 
gathered from the various homes and focus them upon the 
work at hand. 1 It must turn their minds from the petty 
troubles of the morning to the more interesting exercises 
of the school. To put the minds of the pupils in tune 
and in harmony with the social spirit of the school, to call 
them from distracting things and to unify them by cen- 
tering upon the topic of general interest is the first and 
greatest purpose of the opening exercise period. 

£The opening exercise, however, will in addition to its 
first and greatest purpose furnish an excellent opportunity 
to impress lessons in morals, right conduct, patriotism and 
other virtues. It will give occasion also for interesting ex- 
periments in physics and chemistry, illustrations of strange 
things in geography and travel, as well as explanations 
and clinching of dry but important facts. ' The teacher 
who prepares properly for the opening exercises will find 
the period one of the most profitable of the day. It will 
increase the school interest, help to prevent tardiness, and 
improve the social spirit and school conduct of the pupils. 

3 



4 Opening Exercises for Schools 

It is hoped that the suggestions, the stories and the 
gems that follow will help the teacher who uses this hook- 
let to improve this important period of the day, making 
it more fruitful not only in the regular work of the school 
but in the future life and conduct of the pupils. 

Variation of the Exercises. 

Children tire of sameness. They like variation. Even 
older people like some variation in the monotony of the 
daily life. Children appreciate more than grown people. 
If the first period of the day is full of happy surprises, if 
the pupils look forward to it with pleasant anticipation 
and interest, they will be on time and eager to hear what 
is to come.- This does not mean that the exercises are to 
be haphazard, but the reverse. J The teacher is to plan 
them in advance, but yet be ready for taking advantage 
of the unexpected mood or event that may come up un- 
expectedly. Plan and carry out one general form of ex- 
ercise for weeks at a time if the pupils are intensely in- 
terested in it. Drop it and try another form before they 
lose interest. \You may go back to this form again a few 
weeks later with renewed interest, /Better discard the 
opening exercise than to have it a lifeless, listless, dragging 
period. ' 

The following suggestions may help suggest new forms 
of opening exercises to use from time to time as long as 
the large majority of the pupils are intensely interested. 
Then select some other for awhile. 

(a) Nothing is better and nothing appeals to pupils 

more than one or two cheerful songs for opening exercises. 

\$elect songs the pupils love to sing. I Do not let the sing- 



Opening Exercises for Schools 5 

ing drag. -'Choose a song also that suits the mood of the 
school at the time. It is not to be a lesson in music. 
That might not be of more interest than a lesson in arith- 
metic, but a period in which the pupils sing as the birds 
sing, because they are happy. Nothing brings the wander- 
ing minds of pupils to a unit and in harmony with the 
social spirit of the school more than a cheerful song in 
which all unite. 

(b) /A solo from a pupil or some person outside the 
school, or a duet, coming as a surprise to the class as a 
whole, is interesting. If it is good and is heard often 
enough it will not only be a pleasure for the time being, 
but will help to set a standard of music and serve as an 
inspiration to other pupils to try to develop their ability. 

(c) /A story well read or a story well told, whether 
humorous or pathetic, is one of the very best of opening 
exercises. Children will listen intently. They will get the 
lesson also. without you tacking on a long moral. Let the 
story be one 1 \ that speaks for itself rather than one whose 
lesson must be tacked on by a moral. J 

(d) I Scripture reading without comment is good, unless 
forbidden by law or the school authorities. ; A short prayer, 
if it comes from the heart, \ may not be out of place in 
most communities. However, we must be careful in our 
devotional exercises in the public schools else we get in 
more trouble than outweighs the profit. 

(e) A devotional song followed by the Lord's prayer 
in concert is an appropriate exercise where the same is not 
forbidden. 

(f ) (A brief but well prepared news report of the week 
prepared and read by some pupil, 'after which there may be 
other important news mentioned by pupils is always inter- 



6 Opening Exercises for Schools 

esting. Brief comments on the news and why of impor- 
tance is also good. Be brief, be pointed, don't be partisan 
in these reports. 

(g) Review the lives of great men who die. J Have the 
facts of their life well in mind. Do not be a "muckraker." 

s 

Tell the good things, else say nothing. There are spots 
on the sun, but do not teach children to look at the spots 
but to enjoy the sunshine. The incidents of the lives of 
these men, if interestingly told, may serve as an inspiration 
to the pupils. 

(h) \ In the same manner discuss the great men now 
living. Avoid overpraise and better still avoid overcriti- 
cism. Mud slinging has become common of late. The 
teacher that cannot point out the admirable qualities of 
Bryan or Eoosevelt, Cleveland or Taft, Cannon or Cum- 
mins, or any other of our prominent statesmen, authors, 
scientists or financiers lacks some of the essential qualities 
of a good teacher. | Teach pupils to admire the good quali- 
ties of an opponent/ and that personal invective is always 
the first resort of a shallow mind. No greater opportunity 
for lasting good can be found than the opportunity at the 
opening exercise period for the broad gauge, liberally edu- 
cated teacher to train pupils to judge men fairly and to 
recognize that vituperation is not argument and that when 
the man is at the limit of his thinking, nothing remains 
but bemeaning his opponent. 

(i) Discuss social and political questions in a broad 
and nonpartisan way. Are strikes and lockouts justifi- 
able? Why? Get pupils to see both sides. You need 
not decide the question ; what you want is for them to 
think. Be liberal. Avoid partisan statements and unjust 
criticisms. 

(j) I Place a maxim or motto on the board and have 



Opening Exercises for Schools 7 

pupils discuss their meaning and point out their applica- 
tion. | Nothing awakens more thought or kindles more in- 
terest. Children often see these maxims in a new light. 
Occasionally the teacher does the 6ame. 

(k) Perform or have certain pupils perform interest- 
ing experiments in physics or chemistry before the school. 
They are always interesting and occasionally exciting. 
Nothing is a better safeguard against tardiness and few 
things will stir greater interest in the community than a 
few well-selected experiments. Producing oxygen or hydro- 
gen, burning a wire in oxygen, making gas from coal ; there 
are scores of such experiments with directions for perform- 
ing given in text books of physics, chemistry, physiology 
and physical geography. The experiment should be per- 
formed often enough by the one who gives it to insure 
success at the opening exercise. 

(1) ' A query box is good. Insist on sensible questions. 
Ignore ail that are irrelevant without mention and pupils 
will soon tire of trying to act smart. 

(m) Information lessons on plants or animals, illus- 
trated when possible by objects or pictures, will be both 
interesting and profitable. 

(n) Discuss the manufacture of common articles, such 
as pens, pencils, boots, shoes, buttons, cotton and woolen 
goods, paper making, etc. Take the class to see the fac- 
tories if possible. If not, lose no opportunity to visit such 
places yourself, observe the processes of manufacture and 
describe them, using pictures and drawings when possible, 
making these steps in the manufacture plain to the pupils. 

(o) Help pupils to grasp dry facts by graphic or un- 
usual illustrations. We read that the United States raised 
three billions bushels of corn last year. The mere number 
means little to the boy. Counting twenty bushels to the 



8 Opening Exercises for Schools 

load and twenty feet to the wagon, how many times would 
wagons enough to haul the corn crop of one year reach 
around the earth at the equator? Figure it out. It may 
interest you. Then what becomes of all this? Again, 
figure out the number of tons of water which fell on your 
schoolhouse, the school ground or on an acre of land last 
year. It is easily done and you may be surprised at the 
result. Get your patrons to count it up for themselves be- 
fore telling them of the result, else they may doubt your 
veracity. 

(p) Select a list of historic quotations such as, "Don't 
give up the ship/' "Millions for defense but not a cent 
for tribute/' and let pupils tell by whom, when and upon 
what occasion they were uttered. 

(p) ' Describe briefly historic places and things you have 
seen. Be brief, be modest, be clear. Have pupils or others 
describe such things seen by them. / 

(r) Describe the habits, manners, customs and life of 
strange people. Material is plentiful. Teach pupils, how- 
ever, to discriminate between what is common to the coun- 
try and what is occasionally seen. Telling the story is 
more interesting than reading it to the pupils. 

(s) Select an interesting story and read one or two 
chapters each morning. It will prove very interesting, 
even though a few have read it themselves. 

(t) [ Have pupils give one or more memory gems. /Per- 
sonally this has proved the most interesting and most 
uniformly interesting exercise of all. Week after week 
children have vied with one another to give the most and 
prettiest gems. What is better than storing the mind with 
gems of thought and sentiment at the impressionable age 
to bless and brighten and uplift in after life? Former 
pupils have told me that it stood out as the distinctly good 



Opening Exercises for Schools 9 

thing of their school life. In hours of darkness and tempta- 
tion these gems came as guardian and guiding angels of 
light to break the gloom. A number of these are given 
in the last pages of this booklet. Teachers may readily 
add to these scores of their own favorites, and the interest 
will increase for weeks as the pupils give them morning 
after morning. 

! Singing for opening exercise is one of the best of all. 
Most children like to sing. Even if the teacher does not 
sing, some pupils will be found able to lead the singing. 
Not many songs are needed. They^should be favorites, 
patriotic, religious, folk songs and others that reach the 
heart. -If music is taught in the school it will be no trou- 
ble to learn favorite songs and practice them at the open- 
ing period. If music is not taught sing those songs, the 
old favorites which are ever new, such as America, Annie 
Laurie, Auld Lang Syne, Battle Hymn of the Eepublic, 
Ben Bolt, Columbia Gem of the Ocean, Dixie, Flow Gently 
Sweet Afton, Home Sweet Home, Marseillaise Hymn, Kel- 
ler's American Hymn, Marching Through Georgia, Mary- 
land, My Maryland, Old Kentucky Home, Old Black Joe, 
Suwanee River, Tenting on the Old Camp Ground, Battle 
Cry of Freedom, The Star Spangled Banner, Nearer My 
God to Thee, and other of the standard religious songs. 

Song books will not be hard to obtain. Write the pub- 
lishers of this book for catalogue and circulars. Each 
child should have a book or at least a book for each two 
pupils. These may be had in inexpensive form, and the 
securing of the books will be easy. 

Not many songs are needed. These should be sung fre- 
quently. I could ask no more pleasant memory for the 
pupils than comes to me of the little white schoolhouse 
in its cluster of beeches that always comes to mind upon 



10 Opening Exercises for Schools 

hearing a number of the songs mentioned above. Others 
and newer ones may be just as good, but they should be 
sung often enough that when heard again in later life they 
will bring to pupils sweet memories of happy childhood 
and the school. 



Stories for Opening Exercises 



A Pretty Incident. 

A newsboy took the Sixth Avenue elevated railroad cars 
at Park place, New York, at noon on Thanksgiving Day, 
and sliding into one of the cross seats fell asleep. At Grand 
street two young women got on and took seats opposite 
the lad. His feet were bare and his hat had fallen off. 
Presently one of the young girls leaned over and placed 
her muff under the little f ellow's dirty cheek. An old gen- 
tleman smiled at the act, and, without saying anything, 
held out a quarter with a nod toward the boy.- The girl 
hesitated for a moment and then reached for it. The next 
man as silently offered a dime, a woman across the aisle 
held out some pennies, and before she knew it, the girl, with 
flaming cheeks, had taken money from every passenger in 
that end of the car. She quietly slipped the amount into 
the sleeping lad's pocket, removed her muff gently from 
under his head without arousing him, and got off at 
Twenty-third street, including all the passengers in a pretty 
little inclination of her head that seemed full of thanks. 
— Exchange. 



Opening Exercises for Schools 11 



The Cigarette Boy. 

Do you want to know where the boy usually begins to be 
bad ? With a cigarette. It is the lad's first step to bravado, 
resistance of sober morality and a bold step in disobedience. 
Just now take the matter on the scientific side. Tobacco 
blights a boy's finest powers — wit, muscle, conscience. Na- 
tions are legislating against it. Germany, with all her 
smoke, says: "No tobacco in schools." It spoils their 
brains and makes them too small for soldiers. Knock at 
the great military institutions of France: "No tobacco" 
is the response. Try West Point and Annapolis: "Drop 
that cigarette" is the word. Indeed, smoking boys are 
not likely to get as far as that. Major Huston of the ma- 
rine corps, who is in charge of the Washington navy bar- 
racks, says that one-fifth of all the boys examined are re- 
jected for heart disease, of which ninety-nine cases in one 
hundred come from cigarettes. His first question is : "Do 
you smoke?" "No, sir," is the invariable reply. But the 
record is stamped on the very body of the lad, and out he 
goes. Apply for a position in a bank. If you use beer, 
tobacco or cards the bank has no use for you. 

Professor Laflin says : "Tobacco in any form is bad, but 
in a cigarette there are five poisons, while in a good cigar 
there is only one. In a cigarette there is oil in the paper, 
the oil of nicotine, saltpeter to preserve the tobacco, opium 
to make it mild, and the oil in the flavoring. The trouble 
with the cigarette is the inhaling of the smoke. If you 
blow a mouthful of smoke through a handkerchief it will 
leave a brown stain. Inhale the smoke and blow it through 
the nostril, and no stain will appear. The oil and poison 
remain in the head or body. Cigarettes create a thirst for 



12 Opening Exercises for Schools 

strong drink; and there should be anti-cigarette societies, 
as there are temperance societies." — American Youth. 

THE TWO WOEKEES. 
Two workers in one field 

Toiled on from day to day; 
Both had the same hard labor, 

Both had the same small pay, 
"With the same blue sky above, 

And the same green earth below, 
One soul was full of love, 

The other full of woe. 

One leaped up with the light, 

With the soaring of the lark; 
One felt his woe each night, 

For his soul was ever dark. 
One heart was hard as stone, 

One heart was ever gay; 
One toiled with many a groan, 

One whistled all the day. 

One had a flower-clad cot 

Beside a merry mill; 
Wife and children near the spot, 

Made it sweeter, fairer still. 
One a wretched hovel had, 

Full of discord, dirt and din; 
No wonder he seemed mad, 

Wife and children starved within. 

Still they worked in the same field, 

Toiling on from day to day; 
Both had the same hard labor, 

Both had the same small pay. 
But they worked not with one will — 

The reason let me tell: 
Lo! one drank at the still, 

The other drank at the well. 

— J. W. Avery. 



Opening Exercises for Schools 13 

THE TKEE PUZZLE. 
The schoolmaster's tree — the Birch. 
You hold in your hand — the Palm. 
Lying next to the sea — the Beech. 
So straightly stands — the Plum. 
Natty, handsome and tall — the Spruce. 
Tells tales on its mates — the Peach. 
Falls down in the slow-dying fire — the Ash. 
Contracts and dilates — the Kubber. 
Cleans the floor — the Broom. 
That fishermen prize — the Bass. 
Got up in the morning — the Eose. 
Droops, languishes and dies — the Pine. 
Oft flies in a cloud — the Locust. 
Cavorts and dances and runs — the Caper. 
Barks deeply and loud — the Bay. 
Always level and flat — the Plane. 
Ever makes a low sound — Aloe; Whispering Pine. 
City of Ireland names — the Cork. 
Fruit golden and round — the Orange. 
Always cracking old jokes— the Chestnut. 
Mouth like a man — the Tulip. 
Englishman moves when he steers — the (H)elm. 
Acorn began — the Oak. 
Carried by people who mourn — the Cypress. 
Trembles and shakes — the Aspen. 
Drink at our meals — the Coffee. 

— Moderator. 

The Fikst Steamboat Passage Money Paid. 

I chanced to be in Albany when Fulton arrived with his 
unheard-of craft, the Claremont, which everybody was so 
anxious to see. Being ready to leave and hearing the 
strange-looking boat was about to return to New York, 
I went on board, inquiring for Mr. Fulton, was directed to 
the cabin, where I found a plain-looking but gentlemanly- 
appearing man, wholly alone. 






14 Opening Exercises for Schools 

"Mr. Fulton, I presume ?" 

"Yes, sir." 

"Do you return to New York with this boat ?" 

"We shall try to get back, sir." 

"Can I have passage down?" 

"You can take your chance with us, sir." 

"How much is the passage money ?" 

After a moment's hesitation, he named the sum of six 
dollars and I laid the coins in his hand. 

With his eyes fixed upon the money he remained so 
long motionless that I concluded there was a mistake, and 
asked : 

"Is that right, sir?" 

The question roused him; he looked up, tears brimming 
his eyes and his voice faltering, as he said : 

"Excuse me, sir, but memory was busy, and this is the 
first pecuniary reward I have ever received for all my 
exertions in adapting steam to navigation. I would or- 
der a bottle of wine to commemorate the event, but, really, 
sir, I am too poor." 

The voyage to New York was successful and termi- 
nated without accident or delay. 

Four years later, when the Claremont, greatly improved 
and renamed the North Eiver, and two sister boats, the 
Car of Neptune and the Paragon, were regularly plying 
between New York and Albany, I again took passage. 

The cabin was below and well filled with passengers. 
As I paced to and fro I observed a man watching me 
closely and thought it might be Fulton, and as I passed 
him our eyes met, when he sprang to his feet, eagerly 
extending his hand and exclaiming: 

"I knew it must be you. I have never forgotten your 
features. Come, I can now afford that bottle of wine." 






Opening Exercises for Schools 15 

As we discussed the nice lunch he ordered prepared for 
us, Mr. Fulton ran rapidly and vividly over his experi- 
ences of the past few years. He spoke of the world's 
coldness and sneers, of the hopes, fears, disappointments 
and difficulties which had followed him through his whole 
career of discovery up to his final crowning triumph of 
success. 

"I have again and again recalled our first meeting at 
Albany and the vivid emotions caused by your paying me 
the first passage money. That, sir, seemed then, and still 
seems, the turning point in my destiny — the dividing 
line between light and darkness — the first actual recogni- 
tion of my usefulness from my fellow man. God bless 
you, sir ! That act of yours gave me the courage I needed." 
— Heart Throbs. 

The Woman Who Saved Washington. 

Did you ever hear the story of the sweet Quaker woman, 
Lydia Darragh, who saved Washington's army from being 
surprised by the British? 

It was during the winter that the British army occu- 
pied the city of Philadelphia. The higher officers of the 
British army were in the habit of holding meetings at the 
house of Lydia and William Darragh, where they dis- 
cussed subjects of importance. 

One day the adjutant-general told Lydia that she should 
have a room ready for himself and his friends, as they 
intended holding a meeting that night, and that she and 
her family must retire to bed early, so that there would be 
no danger of anyone overhearing what the officers talked 
about. "When we are ready to depart/' he added, "we 
will give you notice to let us out and extinguish the fire 
and candles." 



16 Opening Exercises for Schools 

Lydia was a brave woman who loved her country, and 
something in the officer's manner made her suspect that 
some secret of war was to be discussed. If she could only 
find out what it was, how much she might do for her dear 
country! At last she made up her mind to listen at the 
door of the room in which they sat, and removing her 
shoes she stole quietly to the door and listened at the key- 
hole. There she heard the order read for the troops to 
leave the city on the night of the fourth and to attack the 
American army at "White Marsh. 

She remained listening as long as she dared, then, re- 
turning to her room, she went to bed and pretended to 
sleep. In a short time the officers came knocking at her 
door to let her know that they were ready to leave, but 
she let them knock for awhile, so they would think she 
was sleeping. She let them out and then returned to bed, 
but there was no sleep for her that night. She thought of 
the terrible danger of the American army, how thousands 
of them would be slain in midnight attack, and she deter- 
mined that she would save them. 

The next morning she arose at dawn and started to 
Frankford for flour, but before going there she had to ob- 
tain permission from General Howe to cross the British 
lines. Howe gave her the pass, but when she reached the 
mill she did not stop there, but hurried on towards the 
American army. 

Before she reached the army she met Capt. Allen 
M'Lean, who had been sent out by "Washington to gather 
news of the British. Lydia told him her story, after 
making him promise not to tell who gave him the in- 
formation. Then she returned home with her flour, and 
very anxiously, indeed, she watched the movements of the 
British. She was veryanxious, too, while they were away 



Opening Exercises for Schools 17 

on their midnight march, and when they returned and 
the adjutant-general called her to his rooms she was 
thoroughly frightened. 

When she went to his rooms he locked the doors and 
asked whether all her family were in bed on the night he 
had received company. She told him that they had all 
gone to bed at eight o'clock, which was true. He then 
told her that somehow they had been betrayed, for when 
they arrived at Washington's camp they found the army 
ready to receive them, with cannon mounted and troops 
under arms, so that the British could do nothing but march 
back home again. 

You may be sure that Lydia Darragh was a happy 
woman that day, for she had saved Washington's army. — 
Fountain. 

A Life Lesson". 

Mary Frances Butts explains in a beautiful poem, "Un- 
folding Life," using the water lily as an example. First 
the poet addresses the water lily at the edge of the river 
thus: 

"O star on the breast of the river! 
O marvel of bloom and grace! 
Did you fall right down from heaven, 

Out of the sweetest place? 
You are white as the thoughts of an angel, 

Your heart is steeped in the sun; 
Did you grow in the Golden City, 
My pure and radiant one?" 

To which the water lily replies : 

"Nay, nay, I fell not out of heaven; 
None gave me my saintly white; 
It slowly grew from the darkness, 
Down in the dreary night. 



18 Opening Exercises for Schools 

From the ooze of the silent river 

I won my glory and grace ; 
White souls fall not, my poet, 

They rise to the sweetest place.' ' 

[Study, explain, commit.] 

Histoeical Recreations. 

1. What battle occurred when both armies were march- 
ing to make a night attack upon each other ? 

2. What trees are celebrated in our history? 

3. By whom, and on what occasion, were these words 
used : "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute ?" 

4. How did a half-witted boy once save a fort from 
capture ? 

5. Name some defeats which had all the effect of 
victories. 

6. What territory has the United States acquired by 
purchase? by conquest? by annexation? 

7. Who said, "I am not worth purchasing; but such 
as I am, the king of England is not rich enough to 
buy me"? 

8. Which is the longer, the Atlantic cable or the Pacific 
railroad ? 

9. What battle was fought and gained without a com- 
manding officer? 

10. What was the "Nullification Act"? 

11. Where is the "Cradle of Liberty"? 

12. On what mountains have battles been fought? 

13. What states were named for mountain ranges? 



Opening Exercises for Schools 19 

14. What was meant by saying that "Clay was in the 
succession" ? 

15. How many states were named from their principal 
rivers ? 

16. What colonel, when asked if he could take a battery, 
replied, "I'll try, sir." 

17. Of what president was it said, "If his soul were 
turned inside out, not a spot could be found upon it" ? 

18. What colony was founded as a home for the poor ? 

19. What colonies were named after a king or queen? 

20. Of what statesman was it said, "He was in the 
public service fifty years, and never attempted to deceive 
his countrymen"? 

21. What is "squatter sovereignty"? Who was its 
author ? 

22. Of whom was it said, "He touched the dead corpse 
of public credit, and it sprung upon its feet" ? 

23. What are the "alien and sedition laws" ? 

24. Who was "the old man eloquent"? 

25. What president introduced "rotation in office"? 

The Fable of the Hemlock. 

Once upon a time a man found a little, dry, dead tree. 
It was a hemlock, and if that little tree could have lived 
to be a hundred years old, what a monarch it could have 
been ! how tall, and strong, and stately, and majestic ! 

But it grew in a bog, and a muskrat, that was digging 
its hole under the little hemlock, bit off its roots, and so it 
died. 



20 Opening Exercises for Schools 

Now, as this was in the days when trees could talk — 
even dead hemlocks — the man was curious to find out why 
this tree was full of limbs and knots and gnarls, and so 
he asked Hemlock to tell him the reason. 

"Poor Hemlock!" said the man, "I don't wonder that 
you died ! Think of having all these limbs and knots to 
support !" 

"Yes, indeed/' said Hemlock, "I have had a hard time. 
And my roots, you know, were all cut off, and they are the 
mouths with which I feed." 

"But where/' asked the man, "do all these ugly limbs 
come from?" 

"Just where all ugly things come from," answered Hem- 
lock, who, by the way, was quite a philosopher. 

"I'm pretty much like you men," continued Hemlock; 
"find out where my limbs come from and you find where 
all human sins come from." 

Now, the man was very curious to know about this 
matter, so he took the tree at its word. 

With his knife he peeled off all the bark; but still the 
limbs and knots remained. 

"You must go deeper than that," said Hemlock. 

So the man split and took off layer after layer of wood. 
But the knots were there still. "Deeper," said Hemlock, 
"go deeper still." 

So the man kept on, and split it all off, and separated 
it. Then the heart of the tree was laid bare. It looked 
like a long, slender rod, about six feet long and about an 
inch through at the large ends. 

And as the man looked he saw, to his surprise, that 
every single limb and knot and gnarl started in the heart. 

Every one of those limbs and knots and gnarls he had 
puzzled about was there; every one grew out of the heart. 



Opening Exercises for Schools 21 

And the germ, the starting point of every single one, was 
the center of the heart. 

THE STORY OF GRUMBLE TOM. 

There was a boy named Grumble Tom who ran away to sea. 
1 ' I 'm sick of things on land, ' ' he said, ' ' as sick as I can be ! 
A life upon the bounding wave will suit a boy like me" 

The seething ocean billows failed to stimulate his mirth, 
For he did not like the vessel or the dizzy, rolling berth, 
And he thought the sea was almost as unpleasant as the earth. 

He wandered into foreign lands, he saw each wondrous sight, 
But nothing that he saw or heard seemed just exactly right, 
And so he journeyed on and on, still seeking for delight. 

He talked with kings and ladies fair, he dined in courts, they say, 

But always found the people dull, and longed to get away, 

To search for that mysterious land where he should like to stay. 

He wandered all over the world, his hair grew white as snow, 
He reached that final bourne at last where all of us must go, 
But never found the land he sought. The reason would you know? 

The reason was that north or south, where'er his steps were bent, 
On land or sea, in court or hall, he found but discontent; 
For he took his disposition with him everywhere he went. 

— St. Nicholas. 

An Anecdote of Lincoln. 

President Lincoln was walking with a friend and turned 
back for some distance to assist a beetle that had gotten 
on its back and lay on the walk, legs sprawling in air, 
vainly trying to turn itself over. The friend expressed 
surprise that the president, burdened with the care of a 
warring nation, should find time to spare in assisting a 
bug. 



22 Opening Exercises for Schools 

"Well/' said Lincoln, with that homely sincerity that 
has touched the hearts of millions of his countrymen and 
placed him foremost in our affections as the greatest Amer- 
ican, "do you know if I had left that bug struggling there 
on his back I wouldn't have felt just right ? I wanted to 
put him on his feet, and give him an equal chance with 
other bugs of his class." 

[Discuss the traits of character shown by this anecdote 
of Lincoln. Have pupils volunteer other stories of Lin- 
coln showing the same traits, also stories of other persons 
showing the same.] 

"I Pity Them." 

A poor man once undertook to emigrate from Castine, 
Maine, to Illinois. When he was attempting to cross a 
river in New York his horse broke through the rotten 
timbers of the bridge, and was drowned. He had but this 
one animal to convey all his property and his family to 
his new home. 

His wife and children were almost miraculously saved 
from sharing the fate of the horse; but the loss of this 
poor animal was enough. By its aid the family, it may 
be said, had lived and moved ; now they were left helpless 
in a land of strangers, without the ability to go on or re- 
turn, without money or a single friend to whom to appeal. 
The case was a hard one. 

There were a great many who "passed by on the other 
side." Some even laughed at the predicament in which 
the man was placed; but by degrees a group of people 
began to collect, all of whom pitied him. 

Some pitied him a great deal, and some did not pity 
him very much, because, they said, he might have known 
better than to try to cross an unsafe bridge, and should 



Opening Exercises for Schools 23 

have made his horse swim the river. Pity, however, seemed 
rather to predominate. Some pitied the man, and some 
the horse; all pitied the poor, sick mother and her six 
helpless children. 

Among this pitying party was a rough son of the west, 
who knew what it was to migrate some hundreds of miles 
over new roads to locate a destitute family on a prairie. 
Seeing the man's forlorn situation, and looking around on 
the bystanders, he said, "All of you seem to pity these poor 
people very much, but I would beg leave to ask each of you 
how much." 

"There, stranger," continued he, holding up a ten dol- 
lar bill, "there is the amount of my pity; and if others 
will do as I do, you may soon get another pony. God bless 
you." It is needless to state the effect that this active 
charity produced. In a short time the happy emigrant 
arrived at his destination, and he is now a thriving farmer, 
and a neighbor to him who was his "friend in need and a 
friend indeed." 

The Best Kind of Eevenge. 

Some years ago a warehouseman in Manchester, Eng- 
land, published a scurrilous pamphlet, in which he en- 
deavored to hold up the house of Grant Brothers to ridi- 
cule. William Grant remarked upon the occurrence that 
the man would live to repent of what he had done; and 
this was conveyed by some tale bearer to the libeler, who 
said: "Oh, I suppose he thinks I shall some time or 
other be in his debt; but I will take good care of that." 
It happens, however, that a man in business cannot al- 
ways choose who shall be his creditors. The pamphleteer 
became a bankrupt, and the brothers held an acceptance 



24 Opening Exercises for Schools 

of his which had been indorsed to them by the drawer, who 
had also become a bankrupt. 

The wantonly libeled men had thus become creditors 
of the libeler! They now had it in their power to make 
him repent of his audacity. He could not obtain his cer- 
tificate without their signature, and without it he could 
not enter into business again. He had obtained the num- 
ber of signatures required by the bankrupt law except one. 
It seemed folly to hope that the firm of "the brothers" 
would supply the deficiency. What ! they who had cruelly 
been made the laughing stock of the public, forget the 
wrong and favor the wrongdoer ? He despaired. But the 
claims of a wife and children forced him at last to make 
the application. Humbled by misery, he presented him- 
self at the counting house of the wronged. 

Mr. William Grant was there alone, and his first words 
to the delinquent were, "Shut the door, sir !" sternly ut- 
tered. The door was shut and the libeler stood trembling 
before the libeled. He told his tale and produced his 
certificate, which was instantly clutched by the injured 
merchant. "You wrote a pamphlet against us once !" ex- 
claimed Mr. Grant. The suppliant expected to see his 
parchment thrown into the fire. But this was not its des- 
tination. Mr. Grant took a pen, and writing something 
upon the document, handed it back to the bankrupt. He, 
poor wretch, expected to see "rogue, scoundrel, libeler" 
inscribed, but there was, in fair round characters, the 
signature of the firm. 

"We make it a rule," said Mr. Grant, "never to refuse 
signing the certificate of an honest tradesman, and we have 
never heard that you were anything else." The tears 
started into the poor man's eyes. "Ah," said Mr. Grant, 
"my saying was true! I said you would live to repent 



Opening Exercises for Schools 25 

writing that pamphlet. I did not mean it as a threat. 
I only meant that some day you would know us better, 
and be sorry you had tried to injure us. I see you re- 
pent of it now." "I do, I do !" said the grateful man ; "I 
bitterly repent it." "Well, well, my dear fellow, you know 
us now. How do you get on? What are you going to 
do ?" The poor man stated he had friends who could assist 
him when his certificate was obtained. "But how are you 
off in the meantime ?" 

And the answer was that, having given up every far- 
thing to his creditors, he had been compelled to stint his 
family of even common necessaries, that he might be en- 
abled to pay the cost of his certificate. "My dear fellow, this 
will not do ; your family must not suffer. Be kind enough 
to take this ten-pound note to your wife from me. There, 
there, my dear fellow ! Nay, do not cry ; it will all be 
well with you yet. Keep up your spirits, set to work 
like a man, and you will raise your head among us yet." 
The overpowered man endeavored in vain to express his 
thanks; the swelling in his throat forbade words. He put 
his handkerchief to his face and went out of the door 
crying like a child. 

Benjamin" Brewster's Eeplt. 

Here is an account, told by Henry J. Erskine of Phila- 
delphia, of the only instance in which Benjamin H. Brew- 
ster, attorney-general of the United States during Gen- 
eral Arthur's administration, was ever taunted in court 
of the disfigurement of his face. It occurred during the 
trial of an important suit, involving certain franchise 
rights of the Pennsylvania railroad in Philadelphia. Mr. 
Brewster was then the chief counsel of the Pennsylvania 
company. The trial was a bitterly contested affair and 



26 Opening Exercises for Schools 

Brewster at every point got so much the best of the op- 
posing counsel that by the time arguments commenced 
his leading adversary was in a white heat. In denouncing 
the railroad company this lawyer, with his voice tremu- 
lous with anger, exclaimed: "This grasping corporation 
is as dark, devious and sacrificed in its methods as is the 
face of its chief attorney and henchman, Benjamin Brew- 
ster !" This violent outburst of rage and cruel invective 
was followed by a breathless stillness that was painful in 
the crowded courtroom. Hundreds of pitying eyes were 
riveted on the poor scarred face of Brewster, expecting to 
see him spring from his chair and catch his heartless ad- 
versary by the throat. Never before had anyone referred to 
Mr. Brewster misfortune in such a way, or even in any 
terms, in his presence. Instead of springing at the man 
and killing like a dog, as the audience thought was his 
desert, Mr. Brewster slowly arose and spoke something like 
this to the court: "Your honor, in all my career as a 
lawyer I have never dealt in personalities, nor did I ever 
before feel called upon to explain the cause of my phys- 
ical misfortune, but I will do so now. When a boy — - 
and my mother, God bless her, said I was a pretty boy 
— when a little boy, while playing around an open fire one 
day, with a little sister, just beginning to toddle, she fell 
into the roaring flames. I rushed to her rescue, pulled her 
out before she was seriously hurt and fell into the fire my- 
self. When they took me out of the coals my face was as 
black as that man's heart." The last sentence was spoken 
in a voice whose rage was that of a lion. It had an elec- 
trical effect, and the applause that greeted it was superb, 
but in an instant turned to the most contemptuous hisses, 
directed at the lawyer who had so cruelly wronged the 
great and lovable Brewster. The lawyer's practice in 



Opening Exercises for Schools 27 

Philadelphia afterward dwindled to such insignificance that 
he had to leave the city for a new field. 

If Boys Only Knew. 

Henry lived by a big pond. Large trees grew upon 
the bank and many frogs made their home in the water. 
Henry loved nothing better than playing on the bank of 
the pond and throwing at the frogs. Many a frog had 
been hit by the stones which he threw, much to his delight. 
Scarcely a day passed without a few of the frogs being 
injured in this manner, and he took great delight in tell- 
ing his boy friends that he had killed or frightened this 
or that frog from time to time. He would watch for 
hours the old log on which the frogs used to rest, throwing 
a stone each time a frog climbed up out of the water. 

One warm afternoon after throwing at the frogs until 
he was tired he lay down on the bank and was gazing 
into the clouds. Soon he was drowsy and before long fast 
asleep. 

In a few minutes he began to feel cool and wet. He 
seemed to be swimming in the cool water of the pond. 
It was so delightful to move about through the water so 
easily. He then swam to the old log and climbed up in 
the warm sunshine. He looked at his hands and feet. 
They were just like a frog's. His clothes, too, were white 
and green, and soft, and slick, and shiny just like a frog's. 
He took another swim, greatly enjoying his new form and 
then swam back to the log. How happy he was. But 
"thud," something glanced past him and hit the log and 
the loud laughter of two boys met his ears. Frightened 
he leaped into the water, but every time his head showed 
the boys shouted, "Look, there goes the big frog. Hit 
him, hit him quick," while the rocks hailed about his head. 



28 Opening Exercises for Schools 

A number were well aimed and hurt him. He tried to 
hide, but could not long at a time. He tried to tell them 
he was not a real frog, but he could do nothing but croak. 
Frightened nearly to death he screamed and this awoke 
him. He sat up and found he had been asleep and some 
frogs were croaking on the log in the pond. 

"Poor things," said Henry, "if boys only knew how frogs 
feel when boys throw stones at them they would not en- 
joy the throwing. For my part I shall never throw at 
them again." 

And he never did. 

Flower Conundrums. 

A place on the seashore, the name of a tree. Arts. 
Beech. 

A prickly envelope of seeds and to cut off. Ans. 
Burdock. 

A means of conveyance and a large extent of country. 
Ans. Car nation. 

A man's name, a woman's name, the definite article, that 
word meaning still. Ans. Chrys-an-the-mum. 

Two animals and a part of the face. Ans. Cows lip. 

A name for a dog and an industrious insect. Ans. 
Currant. 

A stylish young man and a king of beasts. Ans. 
Dandelion. (Dandy.) 

An animal and a covering for the hands. Ans. Fox 
glove. 

A fowl and a small fruit. Ans. Goose berry. 



Opening Exercises for Schools 29 

A small piece of money and a word meaning kingly. 
Ans. Penny royal. 

Belonging to a cistern and a word meaning relation. 
Ans. Pump kin. 

A sudden breaking and a fabled monster. Ans. Snap 
dragon. 

A portion of duration. Ans. Thyme. 

A number and a part of the face. Ans. Tu lip. 

A personal pronoun, the name of an evergreen shrub. 
Ans. Yew. 

The edge of a garment and a fastener. Ans. Hem lock. 

What the driver says to his oxen and something sharp. 
Ans. Haw thorn. 

A vowel and a consonant and form the name of a vine. 
Ans. Ivy, (I-v). 

An abbreviation of a man's name and a possessive pro- 
noun. Ans. (Jas. mine.) Jasmine. 

To recline and a deficit. Ans. (Lie lack.) Lilac. 

A girl's name and a metal. Ans. Mari gold. 

A man whose life is devoted to religion and a head 
covering. Ans. ( Monk [s] hood.) Monkshood. 

A part of the day and what great men achieve. Ans. 
Morning glory. 

A soft food and a part of a house. Ans. Mush room. 

— Mary Hallaran. 



30 Opening Exercises for Schools 

DEESS. 

"From little matters let us pass to less, 
And lightly touch the mysteries of dress; 
The outward for the inner man reveal, 
We guess the pulp before we eat the peel. 
One single precept might the whole condense — 
Be sure your tailor is a man of sense; 
But add a little care, or decent pride, 
And always err upon the sober side. 
Wear seemly gloves; not black, nor yet too light, 
And least of all the pair that once was white. 
Have a good hat. The secret of your looks 
Lies with the beaver in Canadian brooks. 
Virtue may flourish in an old cravat, 
But man and nature scorn the shocking hat. 
Be shy of breast pins, plain, well-ironed white, 
With small pearl buttons — two of them in sight, 
Is always genuine, while your gems may pass, 
Though real diamonds, for ignoble glass. 

— Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

LITTLE BY LITTLE. 

Little by little the time goes by — 

Short, if you sing through it, long, if you sigh. 

Little by little — an hour a day, 

Gone with the years that have vanished away. 

Little by little the race is run; 

Trouble and waiting and toil are done! 

Little by little the skies grow clear; 
Little by little the sun comes near; 
Little by little the days smile out, 
Gladder and brighter on pain and doubt; 
Little by little the seed we sow > 
Into a beautiful yield will grow. 

Little by little the world grows strong, 
Fighting the battle of Eight and Wrong; 



Opening Exercises for Schools 31 

Little by little the Wrong gives way — 
Little by little the Eight has sway. 
Little by little all longing souls 
Struggle up nearer the shining goals. 

Little by little the good in men 
Blossoms to beauty, for human ken; 
Little by little the angels see 
Prophecies better of good to be; 
Little by little the God of all 
Lifts the world nearer the pleading call. 

— From "Heart Throbs." 

Power of Commands and Requests. 

The story goes that Queen Victoria once expressed her- 
self to her husband in rather a despotic tone, and Prince 
Albert, whose manly self-respect was smarting at her words, 
sought the seclusion of his own apartment, closing and 
locking the door. In about five minutes some one knocked. 

"Who is it," inquired the prince. 

"It is I. Open to the queen of England!" haughtily 
responded her majesty. There was no reply. After a 
long interval there came a gentle tapping and the low 
spoken words: "It is I, Victoria, your wife." Is it nec- 
essary to add that the door was opened or that the dis- 
agreement was at an end? It is said that civility is to a 
man what beauty is to a woman ; it creates an instantaneous 
impression in his behalf. — From "Pushing to the Front." 

Which Is Best? 

"Don't you wish you had my power?" asked the East 
Wind of the Zephyr. "Why, when I start they hail me 
by storm signals all along the coast. I can twist off a 
ship's mast as easily as you can waft thistledown. With 



32 Opening Exercises for Schools 

one sweep of my wing I strew the coast from Labrador 
to Cape Horn with shattered ship timber. I can lift and 
have often lifted the Atlantic. I am the terror of all 
invalids and to keep me from piercing to the very marrow 
of their bones, men out down forests for their fires and 
explore the mines of continents for coal to feed their fur- 
naces. Under my breath the nations crouch in sepulchers. 
Don't you wish you had my power?" 

Zephyr made no reply, but floated from out the bowers 
of the sky, and all the rivers and lakes and seas, all the 
forests and fields, all the beasts and birds and men smiled 
at its coming. Gardens bloomed, orchards ripened, silver 
wheat fields turned to gold, fleecy clouds went sailing in 
the lofty heaven, the pinions of birds and the sails of ves- 
sels were gently wafted onward, and health and happiness 
were everywhere. The foliage and flowers and fruits and 
harvests, the warmth and sparkle and gladness and beauty 
and life were the only answer Zephyr gave to the insolent 
question of the proud but pitiless East "Wind. — From 
"Pushing to the Front" 

What Do These Mean? 

Note. — Illustrate the meaning of each of the following 
proverbs by applying its teaching to everyday life. 

1. A rolling stone gathers no moss. 

2. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. 

3. Fine feathers do not make fine birds. 

4. Birds of a feather flock together. 

5. Beggars must not be choosers. 

6. Great oaks from little acorns grow. 

7. Try to hit the nail on the head. 



Opening Exercises for Schools 33 

8. Never cross a bridge until you come to it. 

9. raddle your own canoe. 

10. The early bird catches the worm. 

11. Where there's a will, there's a way. 

12. Don't cry over spilled milk. 

13. It is a long road that has no turning. 

14. Make hay while the sun shines. 

15. Jack of all trades and good at none. 

16. Necessity is the mother of invention. 

17. Strike while the iron is hot. 

18. There is no royal road to learning. 

19. Rome was not built in a day. 

20. Too many cooks spoil the broth. 

An Alphabet of Maxims, 
explain them. 

A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches. 

Better be alone than in bad company. 

Ceremonies are different in every country, but true po- 
liteness is everywhere the same. 

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. 

Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy 
and wise. 

For age and want save while you may, no morning sun 
lasts a whole day. 

Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways and be 
vise. 

Happy Tom Crump ne'er sees his own hump. 

It is the little foxes that spoil the vines. 



34 Opening Exercises for Schools 

Judge not, that ye be not judged. 

Keep thy heart' with all diligence; for out of it are the 
issues of life. 

Learn to labor and to wait. 

Men apt to promise are apt to forget. 

Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today. 

Order is Heaven's first law. 

Pride goeth before a fall. 

Quiet content is better than wealth. 

Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and 
unto God the things which are God's. 

Speak well of your friend ; of your enemy say nothing. 

The morning hour has gold in its mouth. 

Understanding is better than riches. 

Virtue kindles strength. 

We build the ladder by which we climb. 

Xantippe's tongue was a scourge to her husband. 

You may delay but Time will not. 

Zeal is best when tempered with wisdom. 

GOOD ADVICE. 

Though you deal in liquid blacking, 

Dismal bluing and such things, 
When you have a sale to manage, 

Do it as the robin sings. 
Put some cheerup in your business — 

Be a cheerful sort of man, 
And, with other lines of notions, 

Peddle sunshine if you can. 

There's an awful deal of meanness 
In this busy world of oursj 



Opening Exercises for Schools 35 

But mixed in with weeds the rankest, 

Ofttimes grow the finest flowers, 
Wear a posy on your lapel — 

It won't hurt the trade you plan, 
And along with other samples 

Peddle sunshine if you can. 

— Chicago Eecord. 



THE FLAG. 

Here comes The Flag. 

Hail it! 

Who dares to drag 

Or trail it? 

Give it hurrahs — 

Three for the stars, 

Three for the bars. 

Uncover your head to it! 

The soldiers who tread to it 

Shout at the sight of it, 

The justice and right of it, 

The unsullied white of it, 

The blue and the red of it, 

And tyrrany's dread of it! 

Here comes The Flag! 

Cheer it! 

Valley and crag 

Shall hear it. 

Fathers shall bless it, 

Children caress it. 

All shall maintain it, 

'None shall stain it. 
Cheers for the sailors that fought on the wave for it, 
Cheers for the soldiers that always were brave for it, 
Tears for the men that went down to the grave for it. 

Here comes The Flag! 

i — Arthur Macy, in Youth's Companion. 



36 Opening Exercises for Schools 

His Old Father Satisfied. 

Twenty years ago a discouraged young doctor in one of 
our large cities was visited once by his old father, who 
came up from a rural district to look after his boy. 

"Well, son," he said, "how are you getting along?" 

"I'm not getting along at all," was the disheartened 
answer. "I'm not doing a thing." 

The old man's countenance fell, but he spoke of cour- 
age and patience and perseverance. Later in the day he 
went with his son to the "Free Dispensary," where the 
young doctor had an unsalaried position, and where he 
spent an hour or more every day. 

The father sat by, a silent but intensely interested spec- 
tator, while twenty-five poor unfortunates received help. 
The doctor forgot his visitor while he bent his skilled en- 
ergies to this task; but hardly had the door closed on the 
last patient, when the old man burst forth: 

"I thought you told me that you were not doing any- 
thing! Why, if I had helped twenty-five people in a 
month as much as you have in one morning I would thank 
God that my life counted for something." 

"There isn't any money in it, though," explained the 
son, somewhat abashed. 

"Money !" the old man shouted, still scornfully. "Money ! 
What is money in comparison with being of use to your 
fellow men? Never mind about money; you go right 
along at this work every day. I'll go back to the farm 
and gladly earn money enough to support you as long as 
I live ; yes, and sleep sound every night with the thought 
that I have helped you to help your fellow men." 

— Chicago Advance. 



Opening Exercises for Schools 37 

What Courage May Do. 

On the morning of September 6, 1838, a young woman 
in the Longstone Lighthouse, between England and Scot- 
land, was awakened by shrieks of agony rising above the 
roar of wind and wave. 

A storm of unwonted fury was raging, and her parents 
could not hear the cries; but a telescope showed nine hu- 
man beings clinging to the windlass of a wrecked vessel 
whose bow was hanging on the rocks half a mile away. 
"We can do nothing," said William Darling, the light- 
keeper. "Ah, yes, we must go to the rescue," exclaimed 
his daughter, pleading tearfully with both father and 
mother until the former replied: "Very well, Grace, I 
will let you persuade me, though it is against my better 
judgment." Like a feather in the whirlwind the little 
boat was tossed on the tumultuous sea, and it seemed to 
Grace that she could feel her brain reel amid the madden- 
ing swirl. But borne on the blast that swept the cruel 
surge, the shrieks of those shipwrecked sailors seemed to 
change her weak sinews into cords of steel. Strength hith- 
erto unsuspected came from somewhere, and the heroic 
girl pulled one oar in even time with her father. At length 
the nine were safely on board. "God bless you, but ye're 
a bonny English lass," said one poor fellow, as he looked 
wonderingly upon this marvelous girl who that day had 
done a deed which added more to England's glory than 
the exploits of many of her monarchs. 

A catboat was capsized in 1854 near Lime Eock Light- 
house, Newport, E. L, and four young men were left 
struggling in the cold waves of a choppy sea. Keeper 
Lewis was not at home, and his sick wife could do noth- 
ing; but their daughter Ina, twelve years old, rowed out 



38 Opening Exercises for Schools 

in a small boat and saved the men. During, the next 
thirty years she rescued nine others, at various times. Her 
work was done without assistance and showed skill and 
endurance fully equal to her great courage. If we will 
but gather up the opportunities about us we may save 
shipwrecked souls sinking in vice, ignorance, superstitution 
and idleness. — Marden. 

SAND WILL DO IT. 
I observed a locomotive in the railroad yards one day, 
It was waiting in the roundhouse, where the locomotives stay; 
It was panting for the journey, it was coaled and fully manned, 
And it had a box the fireman was filling full of sand. 

It appears that locomotives cannot always get a grip 
On their slender iron pavement, 'cause the wheels are apt to slip; 
And when they reach a slippery spot their tactics they command, 
And to get a grip upon the rail, they sprinkle it with sand. 

It's about the way with travel along life's slippery track: 
If your load is rather heavy, you're always slipping back; 
So, if a common locomotive you completely understand, 
You'll provide yourself in starting with a good supply of sand. 

If your track is steep and hilly and you have a heavy grade, 
If those who 've gone before you have the rails quite slippery made, 
If you ever reach the summit of the upper table land, 
You'll find you'll have to do it with a liberal use of sand. 

If you strike some frigid weather and discover to your cost 
That you're liable to slip up on a heavy coat of frost, 
Then some prompt decided action will be called into demand, 
And you'll slip 'way to the bottom if you haven't any sand. 

You can get to any station that is on life's schedule seen 

If there's fire beneath the boiler of ambition's strong machine, 

And you '11 meet a place called Flushtown at a rate of speed that 's 

grand, 
If for all slippery places you've a good supply of sand. 

— Richmond (Ind.) Begister. 



Opening Exercises for Schools 39 

A True Hero. 

It was not an hour after dawn, yet the waiting room 
of the Central Station was full. The soft morning air 
blew freshly through the long line of cars and puffing 
engines. A faint hum comes from without. It was the 
great city awakening for the day. A Scotch collie, belong- 
ing to one of the emigrant groups, went from one to an- 
other wagging his tail and looking up with mild and ex- 
pressive eyes full of good-natured, friendly feeling. Chil- 
dren called to him, some students romped with him, the 
ladies patted his head, a poor negro in the corner shared 
his meal with him, and then he seemed to unite all these 
different groups in a common tie of good feeling. 

While all this was going on a woman was washing the 
windows of some empty cars drawn on to the siding, sing- 
ing as she rubbed the glass. While her back was turned, 
her child, a little fellow about three years old, ran to 
the door of the car and jumped down on the track. 

Upon this track the Eastern Express was coming. Di- 
rectly in its path was the babe ; a hush of horror fell upon 
the crowd. Every eye turned in the direction and a low 
sob of anguish went up from the paralyzed people. The 
dog, with head erect and fixed eye, saw the danger, and 
with a bound and fierce bark darted towards the child. 
The baby, frightened, started back. The mother went on 
washing windows and singing, as the huge engine rushed 
up abreast her car. There was a crunching noise and a 
faint little cry of agony. Even strong men grew sick at 
the sound and turned away. 

When they looked again, the baby was toddling across 
the platform, crowing and laughing, and the crushed dead 
body of a dog lay on the track. "Passengers for Pittsburg, 



40 Opening Exercises for Schools 

Chicago and the West. Passengers for Baltimore, Rich- 
mond and the South," so the cry went on, and the surging 
crowd passed out, never to all meet again in this world. 
But the faces of men and women were pale, and there were 
tears in the eyes of some. The poor negro and the million- 
aire, tottering old men and frolicksome boys, had been 
helped onward, upward, by the friendly, cheerful life and 
heroic death of a dog. — Selected. 

Water. 
Sweet, beautiful water brewed in the running brook, 
the rippling fountain and the laughing rill, in the limpid 
cascade, as it joyfully leaps down the side of the moun- 
tain. Brewed in yonder mountain top, whose granite peak 
glitters like gold in the morning sun — brewed in the 
sparkling dewdrop; sweet, beautiful water, brewed in the 
crested wave of the ocean deeps, driven by the storm, 
breathing its terrible anthem to the God of the sea — 
brewed in the fleecy foam and the whitened spray as it 
hangs like speck over the distant cataract — brewed in the 
clouds of Heaven; sweet, beautiful water! As it sings 
in the rain shower and dances in the hailstorm — as it 
comes sweeping down in feathery flakes, clothing the earth 
in a spotless mantle of white. Distilled in the golden tis- 
sues that paint the western sky at the setting of the sun, 
and the silvery tissues that veil the midnight moon — 
sweet, health-giving, beautiful water ! Distilled in the 
rainbow of promise, whose warp is the raindrops of Earth, 
and whose woof is the sunbeam of Heaven — sweet, beau- 
tiful water. — John B. Gough. 

The Fish I Didn't Catch. 
Our bachelor uncle who lived with us was a quiet, genial 
man, much given to hunting and fishing; and it was one 



Opening Exercises for Schools 41 

of the pleasures of our young life to accompany him on 
his expeditions to Great Hill, Brandybrow Woods, the 
Pond, and, best of all, to the Country Brook. We were 
quite willing to work hard in the corn field or the haying 
lot to finish the necessary day's labor in season for an 
afternoon stroll through the woods and along the brookside. 

I remember my first fishing excursion as if it were but 
yesterday. I have been happy many times in my life, but 
never more intensely so than when I received that first 
fishing pole from my uncle's hand and trudged off with 
him through the woods and meadows. It was a still, 
sweet day of early summer; the long afternoon shadows 
of the trees lay cool across our paths; the leaves seemed 
greener, the flowers brighter, the birds merrier, than ever 
before. 

My uncle, who knew by long experience where were 
the best haunts of pickerel, considerately placed me at the 
most favorable point. I threw out my line as I had so 
often seen others, and waited anxiously for a bite, mov- 
ing the bait in rapid jerks on the surface of the water 
in imitation of the leap of a frog. Nothing came of it. 
'Try again/' said my uncle. Suddenly the bait sank 
out of sight. "Now for it," thought I ; "here is a fish at 
last." 

I made a strong pull, and brought up a tangle of weeds. 
Again and again I cast out my line with aching arms, 
and drew it back empty. I looked at my uncle appeal- 
ingly. "Try once more," he said; "we fishermen must 
have patience." 

Suddenly something tugged at my line, and swept off 
with it into deep water. Jerking it up, I saw a fine pick- 
erel wriggling in the sun. "Uncle !" I cried, looking back 
in uncontrollable excitement, "I've got a fish!" "Not 



42 Opening Exercises for Schools 

yet/' said my uncle. As he spoke there was a splash in 
the water ; I caught the arrowy gleam of a scared fish 
shooting into the middle of the stream*, my hook hung 
empty from the line. I had lost my prize. 

We are apt to speak of the sorrows of childhood as 
trifles in comparison with those of grown-up people, but 
we may depend upon it the young folks don't agree with 
us. Our griefs, modified and restrained by reason, ex- 
perience and self-respect, keep the proprieties, and, if pos- 
sible, avoid a scene; but the sorrow of childhood, unrea- 
soning and all-absorbing, is a complete abandonment to 
the passion. The doll's nose is broken, and the world 
breaks up with it; the marble rolls of sight, and the solid 
globe rolls off with the marble. 

So, overcome with my great and bitter disappointment, 
I sat down on the nearest hassock, and for a time refused 
to be comforted, even by my uncle's assurance that there 
were more fish in the brook. He refitted my bait, and, 
putting the pole again in my hands, told me to try my 
luck once more. 

"But remember, boy," he said, with his shrewd smile, 
"never brag of catching a fish until he is on dry ground. 
I've seen older folks doing that in more ways than one, 
and so making fools of themselves. It's no use to boast 
of anything until it's done, nor then, either, for it speaks 
for itself." 

How often since I have been reminded of the fish that 
I did not catch. When I hear people boasting of a work 
as yet undone and trying to anticipate the credit which 
belongs only to actual achievement, I call to mind that 
scene by the brookside, and the wise caution of my uncle 
in that particular instance takes the form of a proverb of 



Opening Exercises for Schools 43 

universal application: "Never brag of your fish before 
you catch him." 

A Tribute to the Dog. 

One of the most beautiful tributes ever paid a dumb 
animal came from the lips of the late Senator George 
Graham Vest. The occasion was the trial over the kill- 
ing of a dog, which was held in a Missouri town when he 
was a young lawyer. 

Senator Vest appeared for the plaintiff, while Senator 
Francis M. Cockrell, then a county practitioner, repre- 
sented the defendant. 

Young Vest took no interest in the testimony and made 
no notes, but at the close of the case arose, and, in a 
soft voice, made the following address: 

"Gentlemen of the Jury: The best friend a man has 
in the world may turn against him and become his en- 
emy. His son or daughter that he has reared with loving 
care may prove ungrateful. Those who are nearest and 
dearest to us, those whom we trust with our happiness 
and our good name, may become traitors to their faith. 
The money that a man has he may lose. It flies away 
from him, perhaps when he needs it most. A man's repu- 
tation may be sacrificed in a moment of ill-considered 
action. The people who are prone to fall on their knees 
to do us honor when success is with us may be the first 
to throw the stone of malice when failure settles its cloud 
upon our heads. 

"The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have 
in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the 
one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his 
dog. A man's dog stands by him in prosperity and in 
poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep on the 



44 Opening Exercises for Schools 

cold ground, where the wintry winds blow and the snow 
drives fiercely, if only he may be near his master's side. 
He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer; he will 
lick the wounds and sores that come in encounter with the 
roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper 
master as if he were a prince. When all other friends 
desert he remains. When riches take wings and reputa- 
tion falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun 
in its journey through the heavens. 

"If fortune drives the master forth an outcast in the 
world, friendless and homeless, the faithful dog asks no 
higher privilege than that of accompanying him, to guard 
him against danger, to fight against his enemies. And 
when the last scene of it all comes and death takes his 
master in its embrace and his body is laid away in the 
cold ground, no matter if all other friends pursue their 
way, there by the graveside will the noble dog be found, 
his head between his paws, his eyes sad, but open in alert 
watchfulness, faithful and true even in death." 

When he concluded his remarks there were few dry eyes 
in the audience. The case was submitted without further 
argument, and the jury promptly returned a verdict for 
the plaintiff. — Exchange. 

Power of Habit. 

I remember once riding from Buffalo to Niagara Falls. 
T said to a gentleman, "What river is that, sir?" 

"That," he said, "is Niagara Kiver." 

"Well, it is a beautiful stream," said I, "bright and 
fair and glassy ; how far off are the rapids ?" 

"Only a mile or two," was the reply. 

"Is it possible that only a mile from here we shall find 



Opening Exercises for Schools 45 

the water in the turbulence which it must show near to 
the falls?" 

"You will find it so, sir." And so I found it; and the 
first sight of Niagara I shall never forget. 

Now, launch your bark on that Niagara River; it is 
bright, smooth, beautiful and glassy. There is a ripple 
at the bow; the silver wake you leave behind adds to the 
enjoyment. Down the stream you glide, oars, sails and 
helm in proper trim, and you set out on your pleasure 
excursion. Suddenly some one cries out from the bank : 

"Young men, ahoy !" 

"What is it?" 

"The rapids are below you !" 

"Ha ! ha ! we have heard of the rapids, but we are not 
such fools as to get there. If we go too fast then we shall 
up with the helm and steer to the shore; we will set the 
mast in the socket, hoist the sail, and speed to the land. 
Then on, boys ; don't be alarmed — there is no danger." 

"Young men, ahoy there !" 

"What is it?" 

"The rapids are below you!" 

"Ha ! ha ! we will laugh and quaff ; all things delight 
us. What care we for the future? No man ever saw it. 
Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. We will enjoy 
life while we may; will catch pleasure as it flies. This is 
enjoyment; time enough to steer out of danger when we 
are sailing swiftly with the current." 

"Young men, ahoy !" 

"What is it?" 

"Beware ! Beware ! The rapids are below you !" 

Now you see the water foaming all around. See how 
fast you pass that point ! Up with the helm ! Now turn ! 
Pull hard ! quick ! quick ! quick ! pull for your lives ! pull 



46 Opening Exercises for Schools 

till the blood starts from the nostrils, and the veins stand 
like whipcords upon your brow! Set the mast in the 
socket ! hoist the sail ! — ah ! ah ! it is too late ! Shrieking, 
cursing, howling, blaspheming, over they go ! 

Thousands go over the rapids every year, through the 
power of habit, crying all the while, "When I find out that 
it is injuring me, I will give it up !" — John B. Gough. 

THE CHAMBEEED NAUTILUS. 

This is the ship of pearl, which poets feign 

Sails the unshadowed main, — 

The venturous bark that flings 

On the sweet summer wind its purple wings 

In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings, 

And coral reefs lie bare, 

Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair. 

Its web of living gauze no more unfurl; 

Wrecked is the ship of pearl! 

And every chambered cell, 

Where its dim, dreaming life was wont to dwell, 

As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, 

Before thee lies revealed, — 

Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed! 

Year after year beheld the silent toil 

That spread its lustrous coil; 

Still, as the spiral grew, 

He left the past year's dwelling for the new; 

£tole with soft step its shining archway through, 

Built up its idle door, 

Stretched in its last found home and knew the old no more. 

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, 

Child of the wandering sea x 

Cast from her lap forlorn! 

Erom thy dead lips a clearer note is born 

Than ever Triton blew with wreathed horn! 

While on my ear it rings, 

Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings, 



Opening Exercises for Schools 47 

Build thee more stately mansions, my soul, 

As the swift seasons roll! 

Leave thy low-vaulted past! 

Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 

Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 

Till thou at length are free, 

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea. 

— Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

I KESOLVE. 

To keep my health; 

To do my work; 

To live; 

To see to it I grow and gain and give; 

Never to look behind me for an hour; 

To wait in weakness, and to walk in power; 

But always fronting onward to the light, 

Always and always facing toward the right. 

Robbed, starved, defeated, fallen, wide-astray — 

On, with what strength I have; 

Back to this way. 

— Charlotte FerTcins Stetson. 

KEEP A-GOIN'. 

If you strike a thorn or rose, 

Keep a-goin'! 
If it hails or if it snows, 

Keep a-goin ' ! 
'Taint no use to sit and whine 
When the fish ain't on your line; 
Bait your hook an' keep on tryin' — 

Keep a-goin'! 

When the weather kills your crop, 

Keep a-goin ' ! 
When you tumble from the top, 

Keep a-goin ' ! 
S'pose you're out o' every dime, 



48 Opening Exercises for Schools 

Gittin' broke ain't any crime; 
Tell the world you're feelin' prime 1 
Keep a-goin ' ! 

When it looks like all is up, 

Keep a-goin'! 
Drain the sweetness from the cup, 

Keep a-goin'! 
See the wing birds on the wing! 
Hear the bells that sweetly ring! 
When you feel like singing — sing! 

Keep a-goin'! 

— Atlanta Constitution. 

Value op Mental Training. 

One of the most important and successful leaders in 
Massachusetts told this story to me. If anybody cares to 
know where, it was at the platform table of a very grand 
and swell public dinner, where we were both to make 
speeches before we were an hour older. The story was 
this : 

When he was fifteen he told his father that he had gone 
to school all he wanted to go; that he did not want to go 
to high school, and, not to go too fine a point on it, that 
he would not go. He wanted to go to Boston and make 
his fortune. His father as gently as a father could told 
him that the world of mankind is divided into two classes 
— those who give orders and those who obey them. He 
told the boy that if he left school then he would always 
belong to the class of those who obey, but that if he went 
to the high school a year or two he would belong to the 
class of those who give commands. 

The boy — shall we say, of course — thought he knew 
better and persisted. The father knew that, while 
he could lead a horse to water, he could not make 



Opening Exercises for Schools 49 

him drink. lie knew that he could make him go to high 
school, but he could not make him study. 

The boy came to Boston, the typical boy of the stories; 
Whittington with a grip sack and a five dollar bill in his 
pocket. And he had not been there three months before he 
learned his father was right. 

I found out, said he, that I was one of those who had 
to take orders and that I should be. I did not write well 
enough, I did not count figures well enough. I knew no 
French or German. I could not state what I wanted done 
on paper. 

I had the courage and sense to go back on my tracks. 
Night in, night out, from September to June, I worked 
two or three hours in the evening high schools. Year in 
and year out it took me to make good the loss of that one 
year at the high school. 

And he said to me that it was simply the grit he put 
into this high school work which had made him what he 
is, a leader of men. And he told me that story with a 
distinct wish that I should tell it to such youngsters as 
read this article. — Selected. 

Tribute to Mother. 

On this happy Christmas morning let none forget 
mother; be she ever so far away, let some tribute of love 
be sent her. Honor dear old mother. Time has scat- 
tered the snowy flakes on her brow, plowed deep furrows 
on her cheek, but is she not beautiful now? The lips 
are thin and shrunken, but these are the lips that have 
kissed many a hot tear from childish cheeks and they are 
the sweetest cheeks and lips in the world. The eye is 
dim, yet it glows with the soft radiance of holy love which 
can never fade. The sands of life are nearly run out, 



50 Opening Exercises for Schools 

but feeble as she is she will go further and reach down 
lower for you than anyone else upon earth. When the 
world shall despise and forsake you, when it leaves you by 
the wayside to die, unnoticed, the dear old mother will 
gather you up in her feeble arms and carry you home and 
tell you of all your virtues until you almost forget that 
your soul is disfigured by vices. Love her dearly and cheer 
her declining years with tender devotion.— A nonymous. 

A Hero of Peace. 

Menthon is a great shaggy, tan-colored St. Bernard dog 
with a snow-white breast, long ears, and big brown eyes 
that look lovingly up into your face as he wags "How-do- 
you-do" with his long bushy tail. Menthon lives up in 
the mountains of Switzerland. His home is in a large 
stone house in the Great Saint Bernard mountain pass. 

During snowstorms travelers often lose their way in the 
pass and it is the business of the St. Augustine monks, 
Menthon's masters, who live in the large stone monastery, 
to go out with their St. Bernard dogs and rescue these lost 
travelers. 

One day Menthon was sent out by himself in a ter- 
rible storm. How the wind did blow ! It drove the cold 
snow in Menthon' s thick, long hair and made him shiver. 
He pressed on against the wind, going to the places where 
travelers were most often lost. His black nose was always 
close to the ground, smelling, smelling everywhere. Pres- 
ently his keen scent told him that a man had passed that 
way. He plunged forward through ' the drifts, throwing 
the snow high in the air as he ran. In a few moments he 
came upon the man, who was already half buried by the 
snow. Menthon touched him with his paw, and licked 
his face with his big red tongue, but the man did not 



Opening Exercises for Schools 51 

stir. Mcnthon knew in a moment that unless he got help 
the man would die. Kicking the snow right and left the 
dog made a hollow around the man. Then away he went 
barking loudly for help. The good monks heard him and 
three of them quickly followed him to where the man was. 
Lifting him on their shoulders they carried him to the 
monastery. Menthon followed them, wagging his tail for 
joy, because he knew he had saved the life of another 
stranger. In a few hours the man revived, and, after the 
snowstorm passed away, was ready to continue his journey. 
I must tell you how Menthon got his name. He was 
named for a nobleman, Bernard de Menthon, who, almost 
a thousand years ago, took pity on the travelers who had 
to cross the great pass, and built a rest house up among 
the mountains. Some St. Augustine monks offered to go 
and live there and to take care of the travelers. After 
awhile the dogs which the monks used to help find the 
people lost in the. snow became known as St. Bernard 
dogs. — Selected. 

Try Them. 

Place the following on the board and have your pupils 
tell the difference in meaning: 

1. Six gallon jars and six-gallon jars. 

2. Two spoonsful and two spoonfuls. 

3. Two inch circles and two-inch circles. 

4. Two hundred thousandths and two hundred-thou- 
sandths. 

5. Two-hundred thousandths and two hundred-thou- 
sandths. 

6. A paper box and a paper-box. 

7. An ice house and an icehouse. 



52 Opening Exercises for Schools 

8. A salt seller, a salt cellar, and a salt-cellar. 

9. Baby's milk and babies' milk. 

10. Baby's scream and babies scream. 

11. Your fair maid and your fare, maid. 

12. You're fair, maid, and your fare made. 

13. The spirit's sigh, the spirits' sigh, and the spirits 
sigh. 

14. John having left, Mary cried; and John having 
left Mary, cried. 

15. The boys' playthings and the boy's playthings. 

16. The horses feed, the horses' feed, and the horse's 
feed. 

17. May flower, May flour, and Mayflower. 

18. Dislike, despise, detest, abhor, scorn. 

19. Pupil, student, scholar. 

20. Allow, permit, let, grant, concede. 

Benjamin Franklin's Toast. 

At the conclusion of the war Dr. Franklin, the English 
ambassador, and the French minister, Vergennes, dining 
together at Versailles, a toast from each was called for and 
agreed to. The British minister began with : "George the 
Third, who, like the sun in its meridian, spreads a luster 
throughout and enlightens the world." The French min- 
ister followed with: "The illustrious Louis XVI, who, 
like the moon, sheds his mild and benignant rays on and 
influences the globe." Our American Franklin then gave : 
"George Washington, commander of the American armies, 
who, like Joshua of old, commanded the sun and the moon 
to stand still, and they stood." 



Opening Exercises for Schools 53 

Respect fot the Sabbath Rewarded. 

In the city of Bath, not many years since, lived a bar- 
ber who made a practice of following his ordinary occu- 
pation on the Lord's day. As he was on the way to his 
morning's employment, he happened to look into some 
place of worship just as the minister was giving out his 
text — "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." He 
listened long enough to be convinced that he was con- 
stantly breaking the laws of God and man by shaving 
and dressing his customers on the Lord's day. He be- 
came uneasy and went with a heavy heart to his Sabbath 
task. 

At length he took courage and opened his mind to his 
minister, who advised him to give up Sabbath work and 
worship God. He replied that beggary would be the con- 
sequence. He had a nourishing trade, but it would al- 
most all be lost. At length, after many a sleepless night 
spent in weeping and praying, he was determined to cast 
all his care upon God, as the more he reflected the more 
his duty became apparent. 

He discontinued his Sabbath work, went constantly and 
early to the public services of religion, and soon enjoyed 
that satisfaction of mind which is one of the rewards of 
doing our duty, and that peace which the world can nei- 
ther give nor take away. The consequences he foresaw 
actually followed. His genteel customers left him and 
he was nicknamed "Puritan" or "Methodist." He was 
obliged to give up his fashionable shop, and, in the course 
of years, became so reduced as to take a cellar under the 
old market house and shave the poorer people. 

One Saturday evening, between light and dark, a stran- 
ger from one of the coaches, asking for a barber, was 



54 Opening Exercises for Schools 

directed by the hostler to the cellar opposite. Coming in 
hastily, he requested to be shaved quickly, while they 
changed horses, as he did not like to violate the Sabbath. 
This was touching the barber on a tender chord. He 
burst into tears; asked the stranger to lend him a half- 
penny to buy a candle, as it was not light enough to shave 
him with safety. He did so, revolving in his mind the 
extreme poverty to which the poor man must be reduced. 

When shaved, he said, "There must be something ex- 
traordinary in your history, which I have not now time to 
hear. Here is half a crown for you. When I return, I 
will call and investigate your case. What is your name?" 
"William Reed," said the astonished barber. "William 
Eeed ?" echoed the stranger ; "William Reed ? by your dia- 
lect you are from the West." "Yes, sir, from Kingston, 
near Taunton." "William Reed, from Kingston, near 
Taunton? What was your father's name?" "Thomas." 
"Had he any brother?" "Yes, sir, one after whom I was 
named ; but he went to the Indies, and, as we never heard 
from him, we supposed him to be dead." 

"Come along, follow me," said the stranger, "I am go- 
ing to see a person who says his name is William Reed, 
of Kingston, near Taunton. Come and confront him. If 
you prove to be indeed he who you say you are, I have 
glorious news for you. Your uncle is dead and has left 
an immense fortune, which I will put you in possession of 
when all legal doubts are removed." 

They went by the coach; saw the pretended William 
Reed, and proved him to be an imposter. The stranger, 
who was a pious attorney, was soon legally satisfied of the 
barber's identity, and told him that he had advertised him 
in vain. Providence had now thrown him in his way in a 
most extraordinary manner, and he had great pleasure in 



Opening Exercises for Schools 55 

transferring a great many thousand pounds to a worthy 
man, the rightful heir of the property. Thus was man's 
extremity God's opportunity. Had the poor barber pos- 
sessed one half-penny, or even had credit for a candle, he 
might have remained unknown for years; but he trusted 
God, who never said, "Seek ye my face" in vain. 

Behind Time. 

A railroad train was rushing along at almost lightning 
speed. A curve was just ahead, beyond which was a sta- 
tion where two trains usually met. The conductor was 
late — so late that the period during which the up-train 
was to wait had nearly elapsed ; but he hoped yet to pass the 
curve safely. Suddenly a locomotive dashed into sight 
right ahead. In an instant there was a collision. A 
shriek, a shock, and fifty souls were in eternity; and all 
because an engineer had been behind time. 

A great battle was going on. Column after column 
had been precipitated for eight hours on the enemy posted 
along the ridge of a hill. The summer sun was sinking in 
the west; re-enforcements for the obstinate defenders were 
already in sight; it was necessary to carry the position 
with one final charge, or everything would be lost. 

A powerful corps had been summoned from across 
the country, and if it came up in season all would yet be 
well. The great conqueror, confident in its arrival, formed 
his reserve into an attacking column, and ordered them to 
charge the enemy. The whole world knows the result. 
Grouchy failed to appear; the imperial guard was beaten 
back; and Waterloo was lost. Napoleon died a prisoner at 
St. Helena because one of his marshals was behind time. 

A leading firm in commercial circles had long strug- 



56 Opening Exercises for Schools 

gled against bankruptcy. As it had large sums of money 
in California, it expected remittances by a certain day, and 
if they arrived, its credit, its honor, and its future pros- 
perity would be preserved. But week after week elapsed 
without bringing the gold. At last came the fatal day on 
which the firm had bills maturing to large amounts. The 
steamer was telegraphed at day-break; but it was found, 
on inquiry, that she brought no funds, and the house 
failed. The next arrival brought nearly half a million to 
the insolvents, but it was too late; they were ruined be- 
cause their agent, in remitting, had been behind time. 

A condemned man was led out for execution. He 
had taken human life, but under circumstances of the 
greatest provocation, and public sympathy was active in 
his behalf. Thousands had signed petitions for a reprieve ; 
a favorable answer had been expected the night before, and 
though it had not come, even the sheriff felt confident 
that it would yet arrive. Thus the morning passed without 
the appearance of the messenger. 

The last moment was up. The prisoner took his place, 
the cap was drawn over his eyes, the bolt was drawn, and 
a lifeless body swung revolving in the wind. Just at that 
moment a horseman came into sight, galloping down hill, 
his steed covered with foam. He carried a packet in his 
right hand, which he waved frantically to the crowd. He 
was the express rider with the reprieve; but he came too 
late. A comparatively innocent man had died an igno- 
minious death because a watch had been five minutes too 
late, making its bearer arrive behind time. 

It is continually so in life. The best laid plans, the 
most important affairs, the fortunes of individuals, the weal 
of nations, honor, happiness, life itself, are daily sacrificed, 
because somebody is "behind time." 



Opening Exercises for Schools 57 

Pass on the Praise. 

"You're a great little wife, and 1 don't know what I 
would do without you." And as he spoke he put his arms 
about her and kissed her, and she forgot all the care in 
that moment. And, forgetting it all, she sang as she 
washed the dishes, and sang as she made the beds, and the 
song was heard next door, and a woman there caught the 
refrain and sang also, and two homes were happier because 
he had told her that sweet old story — the story of the love 
of a husband for a wife. As she sang, the butcher boy who 
called for the order heard the whistle, and one man hear- 
ing it thought, "Here is a lad who loves his work, a lad 
happy and contented/' 

And because she sang her heart was mellowed, and as 
she swept about the back door the cool air kissed her 
on the cheek, and she thought of a poor old woman she 
knew, and a little basket went over to the home with a 
quarter for a crate or two of wood. 

So, because he kissed her and praised her, the song 
came and the influence went out and out. 

Pass on the praise. 

A word and you make a rift in the cloud, a smile and 
you may create a new resolve, a grasp of the hand and 
you may repossess a soul from hell. 

Pass on the praise. 

Does your clerk do well? 

Pass on the praise. 

Tell him that you are pleased, and if he is a good 
clerk he will appreciate it more than a raise. A good 
clerk does not work for his salary alone. 

Teacher, if the child is good, tell him about it; if he 
is better tell him again. Thus you see good, better, best. 



58 Opening Exercises for Schools 

Pass on the praise now. Pass it on in home. Don't 
go to the grave and call "Mother." Don't plead, "hear me, 
mother ; you were a kind mother ; yon were a good mother, 
and smoothed away many a rugged path for me." 

Those ears cannot hear that glad admission. Those eyes 
cannot see the light of earnestness in yours. Those hands 
may not return the embrace you now wish to give. 

Why call so late? Pass on the praise today. — Kansas 
City World. 

Conduct Counts. 

A few months ago, I am told, one of the leading pub- 
lishing houses of one of our capital cities needed a young 
man in their sales department as manager. It was a grow- 
ing firm and the position would mean much to him, as 
it would in a few years, with proper attention to busi- 
ness, make him a member of the firm. Little was said 
about it, but the president was wide awake and looking 
for a man for the place. Young A. G. Blank was sug- 
gested. He came from a good family, and was proud of 
his blood. Some of his family had served in congress, 
several had good records as sturdy soldiers and had borne 
commissions — in fact, his father was known far and near 
as Colonel Blank. His mother and sister were Daughters 
of the American Revolution, and the truth is young Blank 
had a right to be proud of his family. He had attended 
the University and had a reasonably good education. After 
a few inquiries among Blank's friends the president of 
the firm asked for an interview. 

The young man came. His dress as well as his address 
was faultless. He was composed and at ease. The truth 
is that after an interview of over an hour the president 
was well pleased with him, except his too frequent refer- 



Opening Exercises for Schools 59 

ence to what his family had done. Young Blank was 
conscious that he had made a good impression and was 
greatly elated over the prospect. 

Six weeks later a three-line item in the evening paper 
stated that Will Work had resigned his position with the 

M N Company to become the manager of 

the sales department of the C B Company, 

the growing publishing house of the city. 

Young Blank read the item with rising indignation. 
That night he penned the following curt note to the head 
of the firm : 

"Dear Sir : With no little surprise and chagrin I learn 
that the position which I sought with your firm has been 
given to Will Work. I should like to know, frankly, sir, 
why you prefer such a man, a man who has no more 
experience than I, and a man of whose relatives or ancestry 
you know nothing, to a man of my character, standing and 
ability. 

"Yours truly, 

"A. G. Blank." 

Two days later he received the following: 

"Replying to yours of April the third, will say I liked 
your appearance, your address, your composure, and I 
gave you the most careful consideration for the position. 
Since you ask me to be frank, I shall be so. 

"1. We contemplated employing you and not your rela- 
tives or your ancestors. The mill can't grind with the 
water that has passed. Our firm is growing. We want 
men who are ambitious to make a name and a place in 
the world for themselves rather than one who is willing to 
rest on the reputation of his ancestry. Nothing is more 



60 Opening Exercises for Schools 

contemptible than the man or woman who has done or 
earned little of anything in the world and who is con- 
tinually eulogizing the virtues and accomplishments of 
their relatives. I have no desire to employ the tail end of 
royalty and aristocracy. I mention this point first to 
show you that you and Work were on the same footing. 
His mother, I learn, washed for a living from the time 
his father died until Will was old enough to support her. 
I understand, also, she did her washing well in every par- 
ticular. A necessary occupation is an honorable occupation. 

"2. Now, as to your own qualities. I find you spend from 
one to four of your evenings each week at the billiard room 
or bowling alley. Mr. Work tends his garden, looks after 
his mother's wood and the cow, and reads at home in the 
evening. I notice on Sunday you frequently drive a hired 
span from the livery, and have with you young men of 
expensive habits whose spending capacity is greater than 
their earning capacity. Mr. Work walks to church with his 
mother. The month I had you under serious consideration 
I estimated your expenses from $60 to $75, while your firm 
was paying you only $50. Work has been receiving $50 a 
month. I estimate his expenses something like $35. He 
carries life insurance and stock in the building and loan 
association. The man we employ must handle hundreds 
of dollars each day that is not his own. I know the 
temptations that may come when expenses outrun salary. 

"Trusting that this may make clear to you why I selected 
Mr. Work for the position instead of you, I am 

"Yours truly, 

cc ?? 

What do you think of the choice? 



Opening Exercises for Schools 61 

The Fun in Life. 

A sense of humor is more valuable for a busy woman 
than all the latest inventions for making housekeeping 
easy. The patent dish-washer, the self-feeding and self- 
shaking range, the washing machine, the bread-mixer and 
the egg-beater all put together will not help "mother" 
through Saturday morning so well as the ability to laugh 
long and heartily. 

Unfortunately, there is no school where this accomplish- 
ment can be learned. The giggling girl is not so sure to 
grow up a laughing woman. She may regard herself 
and her own affairs with a portentous seriousness. Ego- 
tism is fatal to a sense of humor. So is a lack of imagina- 
tion. So is that morbid conscientiousness which is our 
least desirable inheritance from Puritanism. 

That family is fortunate indeed where the mother is 
first to see a joke and to lead the mirth. In too many 
homes her sole share in merriment is her dismal "I'm sure 
I don't see what you're laughing about!" The mother, 
an invalid for years, who could answer an inquiry about 
her health with a quizzical smile and, a quick "Sick abed, 
and worse up !" was not a burden but a joy to the chil- 
dren who found her room "the jolliest place in the house." 

A nonsense rhyme, a droll conundrum, a lively repartee, 
a story of misadventure may all serve as sauce for a dull 
day. The appetite for fun may be coaxed to grow by what 
it feeds on, until the mature woman, laden with responsi- 
bilities, can smile at her own small trials and help others 
to follow her example. She will learn first not to cry 
over spilt milk, and later will master an even more useful 
accomplishment, and will laugh over it. — Youth's Com- 
panion, 1903. 



62 Opening Exercises for Schools 

HOW DID YOU DIE? 

Did you tackle the trouble that came your way 

With a resolute heart and cheerful? 
Or hide your face from the light of day 

With a craven soul and fearful? 
0, a trouble's a ton, or a trouble's an ounce, 

Or a trouble is what you make it, 
And it isn't the fact that you're hurt that counts, 

But only how did you take it? 

You are beaten to earth? Well, well, what's that? 

Come up with a smiling face. 
It 's nothing against you to fall down flat, 

But to lie there — that's disgrace. 
The harder you're thrown, why, the higher the bounce; 

Be proud of your blackened eye! 
It isn 't the fact that you 're licked that counts ; 

It's how did you fight — and why? 

And though you be done to the death, what then? 

If you battled the best you could, 
If you played your part in the world of men, 

Why, the Critic will call it good. 
Death comes with a crawl, or comes with a pounce, 

And whether he's slow or spry, 
It isn't the fact that you're dead that counts, 

But only how did you die? 

— Edmund Vance Cooke. 

The Lonesome Boy. 

The boy sat huddled so close to the woman in gray that 
everybody felt sure he belonged to her ; so when he uncon- 
sciously dug his muddy shoes into the broadcloth skirt 
of his left-hand neighbor, she leaned over and said : "Par- 
don me, madam, will you kindly make your little boy 
square himself around? He is soiling my skirt with his 
muddy shoes." 



Opening Exercises for Schools 63 

The woman in gray blushed a little and nudged the boy 
away. 

"My boy ?" she said. "My goodness, he isn't mine." 

The boy squirmed uneasily. He was such a little fel- 
low that he could not touch his feet on the floor, so he 
stuck them out straight in front of him, like pegs to hang 
things on, and looked, at them deprecatingly. 

"I am sorry I got your dress dirty," he said to the 
woman on his left; "I hope it will brush off." 

"Oh, it doesn't matter," she said. Then, as his eyes were 
fastened upon hers, she added: "Are you going uptown 
alone?" 

"Yes, ma'am," he said. "I always go alone. There 
isn't anybody to go with me. Father is dead and mother 
is dead. I live with Aunt Clara, in Brooklyn, but she 
says Aunt Anna ought to help to do something for me; 
so once or twice a week, when she gets tired and wants 
to go to some place to get rested up, she sends me over 
to stay with Aunt Anna. I am going up there now. 
Sometimes I don't find Aunt Anna at home, but I hope she 
will be at home today, because it looks as if it is going to 
rain, and I don't like to hang around in the street in 
the rain." 

The woman felt something uncomfortable in her throat 
and she said: "You are a very little boy to be knocked 
about this way," rather unsteadily. 

"Oh, I don't mind," he said. "I never get lost. But 
I get lonesome sometimes on the long trips, and when I 
see anybody that I think I would like to belong to, I 
scrooge up close to her so I can make believe that I really 
do belong to her. This morning I was playing that I 
belonged to that lady on the other side of me, and I forgot 
all about my feet. That is why I got your dress dirty." 



64 Opening Exercises for Schools 

The woman put her arms around the tiny chap and 
"scrooged" him up so close that she hurt him, and every 
other woman who had heard his artless confidence looked 
as if she would not only let him wipe his shoes on her best 
gown, but would rather he did it than not. — New York 
Times. 

Twelve Golden - Eules for Boys. 

(Discuss them.) 

1. Hold integrity sacred. 

2. Observe good manners. 

3. Endure trials patiently. 

4. Be prompt in all things. 

5. Make good acquaintances. 

6. Shun the company of the idle. 

7. Dare to do right, fear to do wrong. 

8. Watch carefully over your temper. 

9. Never be afraid of being laughed at. 

10. Fight life's battle manfully, bravely. 

11. Use your leisure moments for study. 

12. Sacrifice money rather than principle. — The New 
Era. 

THE SINGING LESSON. 

A nightingale made a mistake; 

She sang a few notes out of tune; 
Her heart was ready to break, 

And she hid away from the moon. 
She wrung her claws, poor thing! 

But was far too proud to weep; 
She tucked her head under her wing, 

And pretended to be asleep. 



Opening Exercises for Schools 65 

"Oh, Nightingale/' cooed a dove — 

"Oh, Nightingale, what's the use? 
You bird of beauty and love, 

Why behave like a goose? 
Don't skulk away from our sight, 

Like common, contemptible fowl; 
You bird of joy and delight, 

Why behave like an owl? 



"Only think of all you have done, 

Only think of all you can do; 
A false note is really fun 

From such a bird as you. 
Lift up your proud little crest, 

Open your musical beak; 
Other birds have to do their best — 

You need only to speak.' ' 

The nightingale shyly took 

Her head from under her wing 1 , 
And, giving the dove a look, 

Straightway began to sing. 
There was never a bird could pass; 

The night was divinely calm, 
And people stood on the grass 

To hear that wonderful psalm. 

The nightingale did not care; 

She only sang to the skies; 
Her song ascended there, 

And there she fixed her eyes. 
The people that stood below 

She knew little about; 
And this story's a moral, I know, 

If you '11 find it out. 

— Jean Ingelow. 



66 Opening Exercises for Schools 

Opportunities. 

"Is it possible to cross the path?" asked Napoleon of 
the engineers who had been ^ent to explore the dreadful 
pass of St. Bernard. 

"Perhaps," was the hesitating reply, "it is within the 
limits of possibility/' "Forward, then/' said the Little 
Corporal, heeding not their account of difficulties, appar- 
ently insurmountable. England and Austria laughed in 
scorn at the. idea of transporting across the Alps, where 
no wheel had ever rolled or by any possibility could roll, 
an army of sixty thousand men with ponderous artillery, 
and tons of cannon balls and baggage, and all the bulky 
munitions of war. But the besieged Massana was starving 
in Genoa, and the victorious Austrians thundered at the 
gates of Nice. Napoleon was not the man to fail his 
former comrades in their hour of peril. 

The soldiers and all their equipments were inspected 
with rigid care. A worn shoe, a torn coat, or a damaged 
musket was at once repaired or replaced, and the columns 
swept forward, fired with the spirit of their chief. 

High on those craggy steeps, gleaming through the 
mists, the glittering bands of armed men, like phantoms 
appeared. The eagle wheeled and screamed beneath their 
feet. The mountain goat, affrighted by the unwonted spec- 
tacle, bounded away, and paused in bold relief upon the 
cliff to gaze at their martial array which so suddenly 
had peopled the solitude. When they approached any 
spot of very special difficulty the trumpets sounded the 
charge, which re-echoed with sublime reverberations from 
pinnacle to pinnacle of rock and ice. 

Everything was so carefully arranged, and the influence 
so boundless, that not a soldier left the ranks. Whatever 



Opening Exercises for Schools 67 

obstructions were in the way were to be at all hazards 
surmounted, so that the long file, extending nearly twenty 
miles, might not be thrown into confusion. In four days 
the army was marching on the plains of Italy. 

When this "impossible" deed was accomplished, others 
saw that it might have been done long before. Many 
a commander had possessed the necessary supplies, tools and 
rugged soldiers, but lacked the grit and resolution of 
Bonaparte. Others excused themselves from encountering 
such gigantic obstacles by calling them insuperable. He 
did not shrink from mere difficulties, however great, but 
out of his very need made and mastered his opportunity. 

Did things adjust themselves when Horatius with two 
companions held ninety thousand Tuscans at bay until the 
bridge across the Tiber had been destroyed? — when Leon- 
idas at Thermopylae checked the mighty march of Xerxes ? 
— when Themistocles, off the coast of Greece, shattered 
the Persians' Armada? — when Caesar finding his army 
hard pressed, seized spear and buckler, fought while he 
reorganized his men, and snatched victory from defeat? — 
when Winkelried gathered to his breast a sheaf of Austrian 
spears, thus opened a path through which his comrades 
passed to freedom? — when Benedict Arnold, by desperate 
daring at Saratoga, won the battle which seemed doubtful 
to Horatio Gates, loitering near his distant tent? — when 
for years Napoleon did not lose a single battle in which 
he was personally engaged? — when Wellington fought in 
many climes without ever being conquered? — when Ney, 
on a hundred fields, changed apparent disaster into bril- 
liant triumph? — when Perry left the disabled Lawrence, 
rowed to the Niagara and silenced the British guns? 

History furnishes thousands of examples of men who 
have seized occasions to accomplish results deemed impos- 



r 



68 Opening Exercises for Schools 

sible by those less resolute. Prompt decision and whole- 
souled action sweep the world before them. 

True there has been but one Napoleon; but, on the 
other hand, the Alps that oppose the progress of the aver- 
age American youth are not as high or dangerous as the 
summits crossed by the Corsican. 

Don't wait for extraordinary opportunities. Seize com- 
mon occasions and make them great. — Pushing to the 
Front. 



THE BRAVEST BATTLE. 

The bravest battle that ever was fought! 

Shall I tell you where and when? 
On the maps of the world you will find it not; 

'Twas fought by the mothers of men. 

Nay, not with cannon or battle-shot, 

With a sword or noble pen; 
Nay, not with eloquent words or thought 

From mouths of wonderful men! 

But deep in a walled-up woman's heart — 

Of a woman that would not yield, 
But bravely, silently bore her part — 

Lo, there is that battle-field I 

No marshaling troops, no bivouac song; 

No banner to gleam and wave; 
But oh! these battles, they last so long — 

From babyhood to the grave. 

Yet, faithful still as a bridge of stars, 

She fights in her walled-up town — 
Fights on and on in the endless wars, 
Then silent, unseen, goes down. 



Opening Exercises for Schools 69 

Oh, ye with banners and battle-shot, 

And soldiers to shout and praise! 
I tell you the kingliest victories fought 

Were fought in those silent ways. 

O spotless woman in a world of shame, 

With splendid and silent scorn, 
Go back to God as white as you came — 

The kingliest warrior born! 

— Joaquin Miller. 

Seeing the Point. 

A boy returned from school one day with a report that 
his scholarship had fallen below the usual average. And 
this conversation took place: 

"Son," said his father, "you've fallen behindHhis month, 
haven't you?" 

"Yes, sir." 

"How did that happen?" 

"Don't know, sir." 

The father knew if the son did not. He had observed 
a number of dime novels scattered about the house; but 
had not thought it worth while to say anything until a 
fitting opportunity should offer itself. A basket of apples 
stood upon the floor, and he said : 

"Empty out those apples, and take the basket and bring 
it to me half-full of chips." 

Suspecting nothing, the son obeyed. 

"And now," he continued, "put those apples back into 
the basket." 

When half the apples were replaced, the boy said: 

"Father, they roll off. I can't put any more in." 

"Put them in I tell you." 

"But, father, I can't put them in." 



70 Opening Exercises for Schools 

"Put them in? No, of course you can't put them in. 
You said you didn't know why you fell behind at school, 
and I will tell you why. Your mind is like that basket. 
It will not hold more than so much. And here you've 
been the past month filling it up with chip dirt — dime 
novels." 

The boy turned on his heel, whistled, and said : "Whew ! 
I see the point." 

Not a dime novel has been seen in the house from that 
day to this. — Epworth Herald. 

STAKT TEUE. 
"Now start me true," cried Fred, 

To his mates on the hill one day, 
As he sped on his bright new sled 

From the snowy crest away. 
The hill was long and steep, 

While a narrow, shining track 
Climbed up through the snowy deep 

To the top of "Camel's Back." 

Near by, on the mountain-side, 

The tallest pine-trees grow; 
While a dark and angry tide 

Dashes over rocks below. 
But Fred, with a steady care, 

Knows well where the dangers lay; 
No rock, or a hidden snare, 

Shall turn him out of his way. 

How swiftly now does he glide! 

Past gully and stump and curve, 
And nothing can turn him aside — 

Not once from the way does he swerve. 
' ' Hurrah ! ' ' he cries, ' ' I am there, ' ' 

Till the rocks catch up the refrain, 
And he waves his cap in the air 

As he touches the snowy plain. 



Opening Exercises for Schools 71 

And so, in the journey of life, 

Start true, my dear boys, and pray; 
Avoiding intemperance and strife, 

And the evils that lie in the way. 
May you thus, when eternity's light 

Flashes up on your course at the last, 
Break forth into songs of delight 

O'er dangers triumphantly passed. 

— Mrs. E. C. Blakeslee. 

Sunshine. 

"How's business, Eben?" 

The old man was washing at the sink after his day's 
work. 

"Fine, Marthy, fine." 

"Does the store look just the same ? Land, how I'd like 
to be there again, with the sun shining in so bright ! How 
does it look, Eben?" 

"The store's never been the same since you left it, 
Marthy." 

A faint flush came into Martha's cheeks. Is a wife 
ever too old to be moved by her husband's praise ! 

For years Eben and Martha had kept a tiny notion store, 
but one day Martha fell sick and was taken to the hos- 
pital. That was months ago. She was out now, but she 
would never be strong again — never more be partner in the 
happy little store. 

"I can't help hankering for a sight of the store," thought 
Martha, one afternoon. "If I take it real careful, I think 
I can get down there. 'Tisn't so far." 

It took a long time for her to drag herself down-town, 
but at last she stood at the head of the little street where 
the store was. All of a sudden she stopped. Not far from 
her on the pavement stood Eben. A tray hung from his 



72 Opening Exercises for Schools 

neck. On this tray were arranged a few cards of collar- 
buttons, some papers of pins and several bundles of shoe- 
laces. In a trembling voice he called his wares. 

Martha leaned for support against the wall of a build- 
ing nearby. She looked over the way at the little store. 
Its windows were filled with fruit. Then she understood. 
The store had gone to pay her hospital expenses. She 
turned and hurried away as fast as her weak limbs would 
carry her. 

"It will hurt him so to have me find it out !" she thought, 
and the tears trickled down her face. 

"He's kept it a secret from me, and now I'll keep it 
a secret from him. He shan't ever know that I know." 

That night when Eben came in, chilled and weary, 
Martha asked cheerily the old question: 

"How's business, Eben?" 

"Better'n ever, Marthy," was the cheery answer, and 
Martha prayed God might bless him for his sunshiny spirit 
and love of her. — Ladies' Home Journal. 

Precept and Practice. 

The other day when a horse drawing a cart-load of 
coal got stalled on West Street, the public was promptly on 
hand with advice. 

"Put on the whip," shouted the driver of an express 
wagon. 

"Take him by the head," added a truckman. 

"If that was my hoss," said a man with a bundle of 
clothes under his arm, "I'd tie a cloth over his eyes. I've 
seen it done hundreds of times, and it makes them pull 
their best." 

"Don't believe it," said a man with a cane. "I owned 



Opening Exercises for Schools 73 

horses all my life and I've had some bad ones among 
them. The only thing to do is to blow in his right ear." 

"You mean the left ear," said a small man with a very 
thin voice. 

"No, I don't! I mean the right ear. I've tried it 
often enough to know I guess." 

A crowd of fifty people had gathered, and now the 
driver got down and looked the ground over. One wheel 
was down in a rut. He stood looking at it, and everybody 
around him tendering advice, when two sailors came along 
and one of them called out, "Ay, mate, but here's a craft 
on a reef." 

"Over with her, then." 

Each seized a wheel for a lift, the driver clucked for 
the horse to go ahead, and away they went, as easily as 
you please. They were the only two of the whole crowd 
who did not advise the driver how to do it. — Selected, 

• A Lie Sticks. 

"Would you tell a lie for three cents ?" asked a teacher of 
one of her boys. 

"No, ma'am," answered Dick very promptly. 

"For ten cents?" 

"No, ma'am." 

"For a dollar?" 

"No, ma'am." 

"For a hundred dollars?" 

"No, ma'am." 

"For a thousand dollars?" 

Here Dick was staggered. A thousand dollars looked 
like such a big sum. Oh, what lots of things he could buy 
with a thousand dollars ! While he was thinking about 



74 Opening Exercises for Schools 

it, and trying to make tip his mind whether it would pay 

to tell a lie for a thousand dollars, a boy behind cried 

out: 

"No, ma'am." 

"Why not?" asked the teacher. 

Now mark this boy's answer and do not forget it : 

"Because, ma'am," said he, "the lie sticks." 

When the thousand dollars are all gone, and the good 

things bought with them are all gone, too, the lie is there 

just the same. — Indiana School Journal. 

Will Never Regret. 

The New Orleans Times-Democrat says you will never 
be sorry — 

For living a pure life; 

For doing your level best; 

For looking before leaping ; 

For being kind to the poor; 

For hearing before judging; 

For thinking before speaking ; 

For harboring clean thoughts; 

For standing by your principles; 

For bridling a garrulous tongue; 

For stopping your ears to gossip ; 

For being generous to an enemy; 

For being as courteous as a duke; 

For asking pardon when in error; 

For being square in business dealings. 

[Discuss each of these with the class calling for illus- 
trations.] 



Opening Exercises for Schools 75 

HE WOERIED ABOUT IT. 

The sun's heat will give out in ten million years more — 

And he worried about it. 
It will sure give out then, if it doesn't before — 

And he worried about it. 
It will surely give out, so the scientists said 
In all scientific books he had read, 
And the whole boundless universe then will be dead — 

And he worried about it. 



And some day the earth will fall into the sun — 

And he worried about it. 
Just as sure and straight as if shot from a gun — 

And he worried about it. 
"When strong gravitation unbuckles her straps, 
Just picture," he said, "what a fearful collapse! 
It will come in a few million ages, perhaps' ' — 

And he worried about it. 



And the earth will become much too small for the race — 

And he worried about it. 
When we'll pay thirty dollars an inch for pure space— 

And he worried about it. 
The earth will be crowded so much, without doubt, 
That there won't be room for one's tongue to stick out, 
Nor room for one's thoughts to wander about — 

And he worried about it. 

And the Gulf Stream will curve, and New England grow torrider- 

And he worried about it. 
Than was ever the climate of southermost Florida — 

And he worried about it. 
Our ice crop will be knocked into small smithereens, 
And crocodiles block up our mowing-machines, 
And we'll lose fine crops of potatoes and beans — 

And he worried about it. 



76 Opening Exercises for Schools 

In less than ten thousand years, there 's no doubt — • 

And he worried about it. 
Our supply of lumber and coal will give out — 

And he worried about it. 
Just then the ice-age will return cold and raw, 
Frozen men will stand stiff with arms outstretched in awe, 
As if vainly beseeching a general thaw — 

And he worried about it. 

His wife took in washing — at a dollar a day — 

And he didn't worry about it. 
His daughter sewed shirts, the rude grocer to pay — 

He didn't worry about it. 
"While his wife beat her tireless rub-a-dub-dub 
On the washboard drum of her old wooden tub, 
He sat by the stove, and he just let her rub — 

He didn't worry about it. 

— Sam Walter Foss. 



THE PANTHER. 

A panther is loose in the haunts of men, 

Strong, crafty, and cruel, and none may know 

What wooded valley shall hold his den, 
Or by what paths he will come and go, 

In the shaded tree boughs he may lie concealed, 
In wayside brambles, in flowery dell; 

The father has taken his gun afield 

And the mother watches the children well. 

The panther is loose! He has put to flight 
All zest for pleasure, or gain, or strife, 

Somebody's child may be killed outright, 
Some one be mangled or maimed for life. 

So every man to the rescue springs 
Armed and vigilant. Heart and brain 

Spurning the claims of lesser things, 

Till the hidden menace be caged or slain. 



Opening Exercises for Schools 77 

But what of the enemy, fiercer far, 

Who roams at will through the city street, 
Who lurks where the seekers of pleasure are, 

Who enters the home with noiseless feet? 
The husband is shamed by his precious wife, 

The mother moans o'er her bright boy's fall, 
And orphans weep, while crime and strife 

And murder and suicide end it all. 

Birth, beauty .and talent before him fall, 

He conquers the mighty again and again; 
Will you guard by law King Alcohol? 

Will you set a price on the souls of men? 
You would save the child from the panther's jaws, 

Will you leave him now to a fate far worse? 
In the strength of God for a righteous cause, 

Arise and conquer the liquor curse! 

Conundrums. 

1. What black thing enlightens the world? (Ink.) 

2. If you were to ride a donkey, what fruit would you 
resemble? (A pear.) 

3. What is it that lengthens by being cut at each end? 
(A ditch.) 

4. What coat is finished without buttons and is put on 
wet? (A coat of paint.) 

5. Wliat is it that is neither flesh nor blood and yet has 
four fingers and a thumb? (A glove.) 

6. What is it that no one wishes to have and yet when 
he has it no one wishes to lose it? (A bald head.) 

7. Why should a housekeeper never put the letter M 
in her refrigerator? (It would make ice into mice.) 

8. Which would you rather that a lion eat you or a 
tiger? (You would rather that the lion eat the tiger than 
to eat you, of course.) 



78 Opening Exercises for Schools 

[The teacher can select plenty of conundrums and they 
will often prove splendid recreations. Do not choose them 
all serious. Eemember the adage, "A little nonsense, now 
and then, is relished by the wisest men." They should 
be neither all serious, nor should they be all comic or 

light.] 

How to Live to Be Old. 

[Interesting talks can be given on health topics. Don't 
preach too much. Make your talk pointed. Stop before 
you weary every one.] The following topics may suggest 
a number of talks and serve as good advice also. 

1. Eight hours' sleep. 

2. Sleep on your right side. 

3. Keep the bedroom windows open all night winter 
and summer. 

4. Do not have your bedstead against the wall. 

5. A sponge bath every morning. 

6. Exercise before breakfast. 

7. Eat little meat and that well cooked. 

8. Eat plenty of nourishing food, selecting that which 
agrees with you best. 

9. Avoid stimulants or narcotics. 

10. Exercise in the open air daily. 

11. Watch the three D's — drinking water, dampness, 
drainage. 

12. Have a change of occupation. 

13. Take short holidays occasionally. 

14. Limit your ambition. 

15. Keep your temper. 



Opening Exercises for Schools 



79 



Fifty Favorite Scripture Lessons for Opening 
Exercises. 



Genesis I. 


u 


III. 


a 


VII. 


a 


XXII, 1-19. 


tt 


XXXVII. 


a 


XLII. 


a 


XLIII. 


a 


XL1V. 


tt 


XLV. 


Psalm 


I. 


a 


V. 


tt 


XIV. 


a 


XXIII. 


a 


XXVII. 


a 


XLI. 


tt 


XCVI. 


a 


C. 


a 


QUI. 


Prov. 


III. 


a 


VIII. 


a 


X. 


a 


XI. 


a 


XV. 


it 


XIX. 


tt 


XX. 



Prov. 


XXII. 


a 


XXIII. 


a 


XXVIII. 


Matt. 


V. 


a 


VI. 


a 


VII. 


a 


XIII. 


a 


XVIII. 


a 


XXV. 


a 


XXVI. 


a 


XXVII. 


tt 


XXVIII. 


Luke 


VI. 


a 


XL 


a 


XV. 


tt 


XXI. 


John 


XVIII. 


a 


XIX. 


a 


XX. 


a 


XXI. 


Acts 


XXII. 


a 


XXIII. 


a 


XXIV. 


a 


XXV. 


a 


XXXVI. 



The Making of Postage Stamps. 

The paper on which postage stamps are printed is sim- 
ply a first-class wood pulp paper, water marked "U. S. 
P. S." 



80 Opening Exercises for Schools 

Stamps are printed in sheets of 400 stamps or "heads" 
at a time. Each press carries four plates, so that each 
revolution of the cylinder prints 1,600 stamps. These 
plates are made from dies, which are cut out by the engrav- 
ers of the bureau. 

The steel used in the dies is soft, so that it will work 
readily, but after the engraver has completed his share of 
the work the die is hardened, and an impression of it is 
taken on a roller of steel, which is also soft. 

The roller is then hardened and tempered and is rolled 
back and forth, under heavy pressure, over a large plate of 
soft steel until it cuts its impression in the plate. The 
plate is then hardened and is ready for the printing press. 

Before the paper is run through the presses to be turned 
into stamps it is counted and then wet down. Dampened 
cloths are placed in the middle of batches composed of 
twenty sheets of paper, and the paper is placed under 
heavy weights, which press the moisture through all the 
sheets. 

After some time the batches are removed and reversed, so 
that the outer sheets are brought nearer the damp cloths, 
and in this way the paper is evenly and properly dampened. 

The presses are run by steam and each carries four forms 
of plates. The forms travel on an endless belt in a horizon- 
tal plane before the pressman and his helper. First, 
the plate receives its ink, then it passes under an arrange- 
ment which wipes off the surplus ink. 

Next, the pressman, with his bare hand coated with 
whiting, polishes the plate so that the only ink remaining 
is in the lines cut in the plate. Then the plate passes on, 
and the impression is taken. Each press takes about 
250 impressions an hour, printing 100,000 stamps. 

The damp sheets as they come from the press are piled 



Opening Exercises for Schools 81 

up with tissue paper between each two sheets of stamps, and 
then the sheets are taken to a room where revolving fans 
remove the moisture and dry the ink. 

Before the gum is placed on the backs of the sheets they 
are counted and inspected by girls who work with extraor- 
dinary rapidity, turning the sheets so quickly that it seems 
as though they were simply counting them. 

As a matter of fact their keen eyes are looking for im- 
perfections and their trained skill enables them to pick out 
a flaw while their nimble fingers are swishing through 
the batches of sheets of paper. 

The gumming division is in the basement of the big 
building, where the temperature is maintained at 80 degrees 
summer and winter. The average humidity is kept at 50, 
and the greatest care is taken to preserve this average. Six 
tests are taken for humidity during the seven hours of the 
working day. The gum is made of equal parts of dextrine 
and a gum imported from Scotland. 

To this mixture glucose is added, the percentage varying 
according to whether the stamps are to be used during the 
hot or cool weather. The glucose has a tendency to harden 
the gum. 

A large quantity, 600 or 700 pounds, of the gum is kept 
in a large caldron from which it is drawn into smaller 
tanks. A test is made to determine the specific gravity of 
the gum, and the gum is weighed. 

About twenty-five pounds are allowed for every 400,000 
stamps. The gumming machine has a reservoir in which 
the gum is fed until it just touches a ground-glass roller 
that revolves about it. 

The slightly roughened surface of the roller catches just 
the right thickness of gum and carries it around to the back 



82 Opening Exercises for Schools 

of the stamp sheet, which is fed forward by an endless 
conveyor. 

A mirror, placed so that the girl operator can see the 
reflection of the gummed back as it leaves the roller, tells 
her if the film of gum is of the right thickness. The gum 
gives a polished shimmer to the back of the sheets. The 
operator with her back to the light, catches a reflection of 
this shimmer as the sheet passes away, and can tell by its 
looks if all is working properly. 

The gummed sheet is fed into a hot-air box about fifty 
feet long, through which it passes to be delivered dry and 
crinkly at the other end. 

Here the sheets are smoothed and packed for the per- 
forating machines, which punch in the sheet the little holes 
that surround each stamp in a sheet. 

Hydraulic presses remove the burrs made by the per- 
forating machine and the stamps are ready to be torn 
from the sheet, stuck on letters and do their full duty. — 
Chicago Record. 

The Dog Who Belonged. 

Tatters belied his name. He was a very rich little 
dog; every morning he had cream to drink and every even- 
ing he had chicken for dinner. His master was Bobby, 
whose father had bought Tatters because his little boy 
wanted to own a dog; and he had paid a good round sum 
for him, too. All these things Tatters knew, and was 
proud of in his doggie soul. 

Prince skirted around corners and picked up a bone 
where he could get it. Tom, who was Bobby's friend, had 
whistled to him one day and said, "Hello, Prince!" He 
had loved Tom, because before he hadn't had any name at 
all, and he had tried to follow him home and belong to 



Opening Exercises for Schools 83 

him ; but the maid at Tom's house had driven him off. All 
these tilings Prince knew, and was ashamed of in his doggie 
soul. 

One morning Prince curled himself up under a bench in 
the park, very disconsolate. The slop cans had all been 
covered up tight, and the back yards swept up clean, and 
the forlorn little dog had had no breakfast. 

"No, Tatters; go home, I say." It was Bobby's voice, 
very decided. 

Prince peeped out in astonishment. Tom and Bobby 
and a half-dozen other boys, with long sticks in their hands, 
were standing on the graveled walk of the park. Upon his 
haunches, waving his front paws pleadingly, sat Tatters. 

"Oh, let him come along," Tom suggested. 

"No," said Bobby firmly. "We have to ride on the trol- 
ley to get to the chestnut trees ; Tatters would be lost. Go 
home, sir, this minute !" 

Slowly the little dog dropped to his four feet, more 
slowly still he started home. A few steps, and he stopped 
and turned around; but Bobby shook his stick threaten- 
ingly, and the boys went on — out of the park, onto a 
trolley car, and away. Tatters shook his curly hair down 
over his eyes, lifted up his head, and gave a long howl. 
Prince, no longer able to conceal his surprise that trouble 
had come to a rich dog, crept out. 

Tatters stopped howling. "Hello !" he barked. 

Prince nosed him all over, to express his sympathy. 
"They might have let you follow the car," he said. 

"I'm mad, that's what I am," Tatters snapped. "I've 
made up my mind. I heard Master Bob reading of a boy 
who did it, and I'm going to do it, too. I'm going to run 
away !" 

"Better not," advised Prince. He felt the rolling in his 



84 Opening Exercises for Schools 

empty little stomach and he saw the folly of such revenge. 

But Tatters 5 mind was made up. He was a good-look- 
ing dog, a valuable dog; no harm could come to him. He 
would run and run, until he came to the chestnut trees. 
They should see they couldn't leave him behind ! 

Meanwhile, Prince had a thought. If Tatters was going 
to run away and become a vagabond, why shouldn't he, 
Prince, fix himself up the very best he knew how and pre- 
sent himself in Tatters' place as Bobby's dog? They 
were both shaggy. To be sure, Tatters' coat was soft and 
silky and his own rough and tattered; but he could find 
a pool or gutter to bathe in, he could shake himself dry 
in the sun, and, even if he wasn't curled, he would be 
a fairly good-looking dog! 

Tatters was gone by this time and Prince set to work 
diligently. In an hour he was much improved, and then 
he crept cautiously to Bobby's house and laid himself down 
near the gate, with all the assurance possible. He really 
began to feel as if he belonged there and to dream of. cream 
and chicken. 

Towards evening Bobby came whistling along and, after 
one nervous tremor, Prince bounded out to meet his master. 
Very astonished Bobby looked when, instead of a silky 
Tatters, a clean, but rough-coated Prince rushed around 
him, barking as if he had always belonged to him. He 
stooped down and patted the strange dog, but at the same 
time he called in perplexity : 

"Tatters, Tatters ! Here, Tatters !" 

There was a thump, thump of a tired little tail; and 
there, on the doormat, quite worn out with his long run, 
lay Tatters! 

Prince slunk back, his tail between his legs. What would 
Tatters think of him? What would Bobby do to him? 



Opening Exercises for Schools 85 

But Tatters was so hungry and tired that he knew just 
how dogs like Prince felt — he had been nobody's dog all 
day, himself! He sat up on his haunches and begged 
so hard, that Bobby brought Prince into the house and 
gave them both a fine chicken dinner. — Katharine Olds 
Hamilton. 

How a Maid of France Helped Her Father. 

The girl in the dull calico dress slipped into her place at 
the boarding school dinner table with a half sullen expres- 
sion on her pretty rosy face. 

"Whatever ails you, anyway, Rosa?" whispered her 
neighbor. It was in French she spoke. "You're not a bit 
of fun any more. You haven't drawn a picture of one of 
the teachers for such a long while !" 

The dinner was brought in and after the meal was over 
Rosa fled to her room and made fast the door. 

"It's a wicked shame !" she cried, stamping a plump 
little foot. "My father's smarter than any other father 
who sends girls to this school. Can any other one paint 
such a picture as he ? Then why must his Rosa go in calico 
while they wear silk? Why can he furnish her only a tin 
cup and a case knife while the others eat from heavy 
silver? I'll not stand it !" 

She paid not the least attention to the girls who knocked 
at the door, begging her to come out, for in spite of her 
poverty Rosa's usually merry nature had made her a great 
favorite with the rich girls. ■ She refused to go to her les- 
sons for the next few days and when her father came to 
see her she begged him to take her home. 

"But what then ?" asked her father in despair. "Nurse 
Catherine could not manage you. When I put you with 
that famous needlewoman that you might learn to be a neat 



86 Opening Exercises for Schools 

seamstress, you tried her patience so that she could not 
keep yon. And now yon will leave this good school where 
I hoped to see yon grow into a good woman !" 

"Take me home, father," she pleaded. "It's all wrong 
to keep me with these rich girls when you have to work 
so hard. I'll think of a way to help." 

And Eosa had her way. At home she ceased her mis- 
chief and almost lived in her father's workroom, watch- 
ing closely all he did and copying much of it. Sometimes 
it was with the clay and sometimes with the brush she 
worked. And at last the father and daughter knew that 
Eosa had found her work. 

"Dearest father!" she cried, after an artist had praised 
one of her pieces, "now, indeed, you will have an easier 
time for I can sell some of my models." 

Eosa had forgotten all about pretty gowns and silver 
mugs for herself. She only knew that her precious father 
was working too hard and that the two dear babies which 
had come to the family since the new mother had been 
brought home, added much to his cares. And how Eosa 
worked! Early in the morning she was in the studio — 
singing, singing, always singing as she modeled or painted. 
It was the live animals she loved to use as her models, but 
living in an upper apartment in Paris gave little opportu- 
nity of keeping animals about. To be sure the artist fam- 
ily did keep a sheep in the apartment and a faithful model 
he was. But he couldn't walk down those stairs, so 
Brother Isidore slung the meek creature over his shoulder 
and carried him downstairs and out to graze. 

But if animals could not come to Eosa, she would go 
to them. Early in the morning with her sketch book and 
a bit of lunch in her pocket, the girl would start on a ram- 
ble into the country. Late in the afternoon she returned, 



Opening Exercises for Schools 87 

tired, dusty or muddy, often with the lunch untouched 
in her pocket, but happy and with something in her book 
to show for her day's tramp. For weeks she went every 
day to the slaughter houses in Paris and for protection 
dressed in a man's clothes. She studied the hundreds of 
animals grouped in the pens and even studied them as they 
were being killed. She had chosen the portrayal of ani- 
mals as her branch of work and left no point in it un- 
studied. Even her hardships brought her happiness be- 
cause of the things she accomplished through them. 

Then came the happy day when Eosa Bonheur's hard 
labor had its reward. She became famous. She cared 
little for fame in itself, but it meant a lifted burden from 
the father for the time he yet had to live and it meant 
to Eosa Bonheur that her countrymen and the whole world 
were beginning to love the animals she herself loved and 
pictured for them. — Janet Thomas Van Osdel. 

The Dogs' Burial-Ground. 

When I was asked in Paris "whether I would not like 
to visit the dogs' burial-ground ?" I was very much shocked 
and answered, "You do not mean to tell me people in this 
country are so foolish as to spend money on a burial- 
ground for dogs?" 

"Where would you bury them?" I was asked in return. 
"Surely you know that in this large city many people live 
in apartments, sometimes up many flights of stairs, and of 
course these people have no grounds and no gardens. 
When a pet dog dies, there is no place to bury him, so 
these good people who love their dogs, and do not wish to 
forget them, have bought a piece of ground far away 
beyond the city gates, on an island — 'The Isle of Dogs/ it 



88 Opening Exercises for Schools 

is called — and they have laid it out like a beautiful park 
and planted trees and flowers. When a dog dies, his owner 
may buy a few feet of ground in this beautiful park and 
have poor Bijou buried there/' 

Well, after hearing this, of course we wanted to visit 
this beautiful place, so one bright morning we started for 
the "Isle of Dogs." When we reached the place, the gates 
were opened by a man who takes care of the park and 
who charges everyone who enters a small fee. After enter- 
ing, we walked down the main avenue, on either side of 
which were small grass plots and in the center of these 
were little stones or monuments with the names of the 
dogs on them, and perhaps a few words telling something 
about the dog. 

One very large and costly monument we saw near the 
entrance. It was of a large St. Bernard dog carved in 
stone — a noble-looking animal. Underneath were these 
words : "He saved nearly one hundred lives in the Swiss 
Mountains and lost his own life saving the one-hundredth." 
The faithful dog belonged to the good monks who lived 
in the mountain passes of Switzerland, and many a poor 
lost man he had dragged through the snow and brought 
where he was fed and sheltered. 

Another monument was in the shape of a dog's kennel, 
and inscribed on the stone were these words: "Put up 
by a thankful mother, whose child this faithful dog rescued 
when drowning — but it cost the poor dog his. life." 

Again we read : "In loving remembrance of a mother 
to whom Lou-Lou gave back her child who was drowning. 
He was only nine months." 

But all the dogs had not been famous for brave deeds. 
Many had only been faithful friends and companions, as 
we could easily understand by the loving words on the 






Opening Exercises for Schools 89 

simple tablets. For example, "Faithful companion and the 
only friend of my wandering and desolate life." The 
greater number tell only of kindness and faithfulness. — 
Mrs. E. M. Dickson. 

The Trailing Arbutus. 

Many, many moons ago an old man lived alone in his 
lodge in the forest. His hair and beard were long and 
white with age and he was clad in warm, fine furs to pro- 
tect him from the cold winter. Searching in vain in the 
deep snow for bits of wood to keep up the fire in his lodge, 
he returns and sits despairingly by the dying coals, when 
the door of the lodge is opened and a beautiful maiden 
enters. Her cheeks were red and made of wild roses, her 
eyes were large and glowed like the eyes of fawns at 
night, her hair was long and black as the raven's and 
it touched the ground as she walked; her hands were cov- 
ered with willow. buds; her bonnet was a wreath of wild 
flowers, and her clothing of sweet grasses and ferns, and 
her moccasins were white lilies, and when she breathed the 
air of the lodge became warm. Welcoming her, the old 
man said, "I am Manito, I blow my breath and the waters 
of the river stand still; the leaves fall from the trees at 
my command; the animals hide in their holes in the 
ground, and the birds get up out of the water and fly 
away/' 

Answering, the maiden said: "I breathe and flowers 
spring up on all the plain; I shake my curls, and warm 
rains fall from the clouds. When I walk about the plants 
lift up their heads, the trees cover their nakedness with 
many leaves, the birds come back, and all who see me sing; 
there is music everywhere." 

Talking thus, the air of the lodge became warm and the 



90 Opening Exercises for Schools 

old man fell asleep. The maiden passed her hands above 
his head and he began to grow small. Streams of water 
poured from his mouth and he was soon a small mass of 
green leaves upon the ground. Kneeling, the maiden took 
her most precious white flowers from her breast and hid 
them all about under the leaves. She breathed upon them 
and said: "I give thee all my virtues and my sweetest 
breath, and all who would pick thee shall do so on bended 
knee." Then the maiden moved away through the woods 
and over the plains, and all the birds sang to her, and 
wherever she stepped and nowhere else, grows the arbutus. 
— Nellie C. Brown. 

THE FRIENDLY HOUSE. 

The Friendly House dispenses cheer. Its shutters are flung wide ; 
The sunshine streams upon the plants that smile with bloom inside; 
The porch has roomy benches where a weary child may rest; 
The blind-doors open out like arms to welcome every guest. 

The Friendly House a deep well has, with water icy cool, 
Where children love to stop and drink when coming home from 

school. 
And there's a big square sitting-room, with many a gay rag mat, 
A shiny haircloth sofa, and a soft old purring cat. 

The Friendly House on baking day is all a child could wish; 
The garden has such splendid things to make, and do, and play — 
Such dandelion stems for curls, such ' ' pudding bags ' ' to blow, 
Such burs for making furniture, such heaps of snowball "snow." 

The Friendly House on baking day is all a child could wish; 
You're welcome in the kitchen, and they let you scrape the dishV 
And often you may roll some dough, pretending pies to make, 
And always in the oven there's a little scalloped cake. 



Opening Exercises for Schools 91 

This dear old house, from cellar clean to attic up above, 
Is full to overflowing with a warm and patient love. 
Its spirit of unselfishness does naught but serve and give. 
The Friendly House — why, can't you guess? It's where the 
Grandmas live! 

— Annie Willis McCullough, Youth 's Companion. 

The Beauty About Toads. 

There is a great deal of beauty about a toad if you know 
where to look for it — which is true of a great many other 
things besides toads, by the way. This beauty lies in its 
brown eyes, and children who study nature in school, upon 
being shown the toad's eyes forget how ugly they thought 
it was before, and often want to take the little creature 
up in their hands to get a better look at this "precious 
jewel in its head." 

Did you ever stop to think, by the way, that the toad 
could not be so handsome if it were not so homely? For, 
you know, <r handsome is as handsome does," and if the 
toad were not of a dull hue like a clod of earth and also 
like a clod in its rough shapeless body, it could not carry 
on its business, which is to eat insects. If a toad were 
as pretty as a humming bird, for instance, it not only could 
not catch the insects upon which it feeds (because they 
would not think it a harmless clod then as they do now), 
but his enemies — such as the hawk, the snake, and the owl, 
would see Mr. Toad, too^and eat him up, just as they do 
now whenever they get a chance. 

Insects destroy enough fruit and grain in this country 
every year to start thousands of boys in business, build 
hundreds of schools and colleges, and do many other useful 
things. Here is where the toad comes in between us and 
ruin. He has been known to eat eighty-six house flies in 



92 Opening Exercises for Schools 

less than ten minutes, and if he can do that with so nimble 
a thing as a house fly you can imagine what a record he 
makes with bugs which cannot so quickly get out of the 
way. 

In the spring of the year the young toad is beginning 
to be a tadpole, although he will not reach full tadpole- 
ship until about the first of June. In the latter part of 
April he is an egg, one of a long row lying in a transparent 
jelly, like a string of black beads, in the bottom of a 
pond. 

The toads lie in a torpid state all winter, but *with the 
first warm days of spring they begin to hop about with a 
soft, low, musical trill, and move away in crowds towards 
the nearest pond where the eggs are laid in the water, as 
the water is necessary to hatch them. One toad will lay 
something like 4,000 eggs — and one wonders why, at this 
rate, they do not overrun the country. But as the toads 
are on the watch for insects, other things are on the watch 
for them. Water beetles, lizards, and fish eat the tadpoles, 
and the little tads which escape from tadpoleship into toad- 
dom, have to run or rather hop the gauntlet of ducks, 
hens, birds, snakes, hawks, owls, and crows, so that the 
toad, common and dull as he looks, has his life of adven- 
ture, just as human beings have, and there is many a scene 
in his life in the jungles of the meadow ponds, perhaps, 
which would read like a page from "Darkest Africa," 
if he could tell and we could understand it. — Selected. 

[Have pupils observe and study toads and report to the 
class.] 

The Charm of a Pleasant Manner. 

There are a great many ways of giving pleasure in life 
and many of these are little ways. Little ministries in the 



Opening Exercises for Schools 93 

aggregate ofttimes amount to the proportions of great mis- 
sions. One of these little ways of giving a large amount 
of pleasure is by the cultivation of a kincUy disposition and 
pleasant manner. Manner does not make the man; but a 
man is the better and more truly worthy because of any 
charm or kindliness of demeanor which he may manifest. 
People are all the time reading the exteriors of other peo- 
ple, and judging the soul that dwells within by what the 
eyes or the lips express. Many persons of really noble 
character are misjudged and underestimated because of 
some oddity or disagreeable mannerism that needlessly re- 
pels others from a closer acquaintance. The diamond of 
character is there, but it is a diamond in the rough. 

On the other hand, gentle words and gracious smiles 
charm every one upon whom they are exercised. It is 
difficult to quarrel with a person who keeps his temper, 
or to resist a kind person, since kindness is a sort of mag- 
netism that insensibly draws objects toward itself. No 
arguments are so winsome and persuasive as those of an 
unselfish courtesy and a frank friendliness. 

Pleasant manners, of course, come more easily to some 
than to others, but they can be cultivated by all. A sunny 
temper is not only a natural gift, but can also be a steady 
growth. The Christian heart is the happy heart, arid will 
let its joy overflow in kindly cheerfulness of look and 
speech. There is sorrow enough in the world without add- 
ing to it by a sour expression and hateful manners. A 
merry heart doeth good like medicine ; and there is a tonic 
in innocent mirth. Any one who will, can be a sunbeam^ 
shining into some dark place and. lighting "the way out," 
for some unfortunate, from gloomy despair to the brighter 
atmosphere of hope. — Rev. C. A. S. D wight. 



94 Opening Exercises for Schools 

LIVE IT DOWN. 

Has your life a bitter sorrow? 

Live it down. 
Think about a bright to-morrow, 

Live it down. 
You will find it never pays, 
Just to sit wet-eyed and gaze 
On the grave of vanished days, 

Live it down. 

Is disgrace your galling burden — 

Live it down. 
You can win a brave heart's guerdon, 

Live it down. 
Make your life so free from blame, 
That the luster of your name 
Shall hide all the olden shame — 

Live it down. 

Has your heart a secret trouble? 

Live it down. 
Do not grieve and make it double — 

Live it down. 
Do not water it with tears, 
Do not feed it with your fears, 
Do not nurse it thro long years, 

Live it down. 

Have you made some sinful error — 

Live it down. 
Do not hide your face in terror, 

Live it down. 
Look the world square in the eyes, 
Go ahead, as one who tries 
To be honored ere he dies, 

Live it down. 

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox. 






Opening Exercises for Schools 95 



THE WOUNDED CURLEW. 

By yonder sandy cove where every day, 

The tide flows in and out, 
A lonely bird in sober brown and gray 

Limps patiently about. 

And 'round the basin 's edge, o 'er stones and sand 

And many a fringing weed, 
He steals, or on the rock ledge doth stand, 

Crying with none to heed. 

But sometimes from the distance he can hear 

His comrades' swift reply ; 
Sometimes the air rings with music clear, 

Sounding from sea and sky. 

And then, oh then, his tender voice, so sweet, 

Is shaken with his pain; 
For broken are his pinions strong and fleet, 

Never to soar again. 

Wounded and lame and languishing he lives, 

Once glad and blithe and free, 
And in his prison limits frets and strives 

His ancient self to be. 

The little sandpipers about him play, 

And shining waves they skim, 
Or 'round his feet they seek their food, and stray, 

As if to comfort him. 

My pity cannot help him, though his plaint 

Brings tears of wistfulness; 
Still must he grieve and mourn, forlorn and faint, 

None may his wrong redress. 



96 Opening Exercises for Schools 

O bright-eyed boy! was there no better way 

A moment's joy to gain, 
Than to make sorrow that must mar the day 

With such despairing pain? 

O children, drop the gun, the cruel stone! 

Oh, listen to my words! 
And hear with me the wounded curlew moan — 

Have mercy on the birds! 

— Celia Thaxter. 



"He Couldn't Say No." 

Spurgeon puts it mildly when he says: "Learn to say 
no, and it will be of more use to you than to be able to 
read Latin." 

Such a tiny word, and yet the inability to say it, and 
mean it, has shortened many a life. At every turn we 
see young and old walking the downward road because they 
lack the courage to speak decisively. "What brought you 
here ?" queried I of a forlorn old lady living out the rem- 
nant of her days in solitude, and dependent on the bounty 
of strangers. She had been talking of better days, of an 
active life, and of husband and children; so, wondering 
at the sad outcome, I ventured the foregoing query as 
she settled back in her old calico-covered rocker, and with 
a long-drawn sigh said dolefully : "Who'd V thought once 
I'd end my days a pauper !" 

She was glad of a listener, and went into the details of 
her sad life, but I will quote from her story only enough 
to supply the key to her changed fortune: 

"Nobody ever had a kinder husband than mine was. I 
don't believe he ever gave me a cross word. That's more'n 
he could say, for I used to fret at him a heap. His father 
left him a well-stocked farm and everything paid for, and 



Opening Exercises for Schools 97 

I tell }'ou I thought I was lucky when I was mistress of the 
Jones farm, one of the best in the county. I was a poor 
girl, but if I do say it, now I'm old and wrinkled, I was 
called the prettiest girl for miles around." 

Then followed a long story of anxieties, mortgages and 
finally the loss of the farm. "He hadn't a bad habit in the 
world," the poor woman said more than once, "but he 
couldn't say no !" If anybody wanted him to sign a note, 
he'd sign it even if he'd made up his mind the minute 
before that he'd never sign another. It didn't make any 
difference if he'd just bought a mowing machine or reaper, 
if a man came along with a new-fangled sort, he couldn't 
say no, but would buy it — until he was the laughing stock 
of the neighborhood. 

"When my son Bill grew up such a wide-awake, hand- 
some boy, people said he favored his ma. I began to have 
hopes that he'd be the backbone to things. But he wanted 
to frolic and be out nights. I used to try and keep him in, 
but a mother's 'no' needs the father's to help it out." 

She said it half indignantly, and added remorsefully, 
"Poor Bill! 'Twas his only fault; but as I was sayin' 
he couldn't say no to our boy even when I tried to con- 
vince him that not to do so meant ruin to the only son he'd 
got to bear his name." Then she told of the death of the 
husband and father, just as the boy had "turned sixteen," 
and how after his death they might have got along com- 
fortably on the life insurance which came to them but for 
one sad hindrance. It was a pitiful tale, sadly told, but 
it can be given in a few words — the wine-cup and an early 
grave. As the mother said plaintively, with the mother- 
love shining through every word : 

"He was handsome as a picture, and an awful good- 



98 Opening Exercises for Schools 

hearted boy, but he was just like his pa in one respect — he 
couldn't say no!" 

Learn to say no, young people, when tempted from the 
path of rectitude. God will put strength and decision into 
your resolves if you ask him for aid. — Helen Thomas. 



Memory Gems for Opening 
Exercises 



GEMS FOE PRIMARY GRADES. 

"Not how much but how well." 

"Kind words can never die." 

"There is no time lite the present." 

"If at first you don't succeed 
Try, try again, » ' 

"You can never turn the mill 
With the water that has passed." 

Speak the truth and speak it ever, 
Cost it what it will. 

0, what a tangled web we weave, 
When first we practice to deceive. 

Politeness is to do and say 

The kindest thing in the kindest way. 



Opening Exercises for Schools 99 

Be true to thyself, 
Be true to thy friend, 
Be true to the world. 



"Take care of the minutes, 

And the hours will take care of themselves. ; ' 

"Do all the good you can 
In all the ways you can 
To all the people you can 
Just as long as you can." 

"Be brave and happy in your little place and you will be ready 
for a larger one by and by." 

1 ' Little deeds of kindness, 

Little words of love, 
Make our earth an Eden, 

Like the heaven above. ' ' 

' ( Work while you work, play while you play ; 
This is the way to be cheerful and gay, 
All that you do, do with your might; 
Things done by halves are never done right. ' ' 

"Before you speak an angry word, count ten; 
Then, if still you angry be, count again." 

Speak gently! 'tis a little thing . , 
Dropped in the heart's deep well; 

The good, the joy, that it may bring 
Eternity shall tell. 

"If a task is once begun, 
Never leave it till it's done; 
Be the labor great or small, 
Do it well or not at all. ' ' 



100 Opening Exercises for Schools 

"One thing at a time, 

And that done well, 
Is a very good rule, 

As many can tell. * ' 

Not mighty deeds make up tke sum 

Of happiness below, 
But little acts of kindness, 

Which any child may show. 

"Truth is honest, truth is sure; 
Truth is strong and must endure. ' ' 

"Dare to be honest, 
Dare to be true. ' ' 

' ' Child, at all times tell the truth, 
Let no lie defile thy mouth; 
If thou'rt wrong, be still the same — 
Speak the truth and bear the blame." 

Kind hearts are the gardens, 
Kind thoughts are the roots, 

Kind words are the blossoms, 
Kind deeds are the fruits. 

No matter what you try to do 
At home or at your school, 

Always do your very best; 
There is no better rule. 

"Good boys and girls should never say 
'I will,' and 'give me these,' 

Oh, no; that never is the way, 
But, 'Mother, if you please.' " 

If Wisdom's ways you wisely seek, 
Five things observe with care: 

To whom you speak, of whom you speak 
And how and when and where. 



Opening Exercises for Schools 101 

Let us be content to work, 

To do the things we can, and not presume 

To fret because it is little. 

" Children, do you love each other? 

Are you always kind and true? 
Do you always do to others 

As you'd have them do to you?" 

Let us seek to scatter, 

Let us seek to sow, 
Little deeds of kindness 

Everywhere we go. 

"The golden rule! The Golden Eule! 

Oh, that's the rule for me — 
To do to others as I would 

That they should do to me." 

(t Cross words are like ugly weeds, 

Pleasant words are like fair flowers; 

Let us sow sweet thoughts for seeds, 
In these garden hearts of ours." 

A dreary place would be this earth, 

Were there no people in it; 
The song of life would lose its mirth, 

Were there no children to begin it. 

"Two ears and only one mouth have you, 

The reason I think is clear; 
It teaches, my child, that it will not do 

To talk about all you hear." 

"In your play be very careful 
Not to give another pain. 
If rude children tease or vex you, 
Never do the same to them." 



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102 Opening Exercises for Schools 

Little children, you must seek 
Rather to be good than wise; 

For the thoughts you do not speak 
Shine out in your cheeks and eyes. 

Sister measured my grin one day: 
Took the ruler and me; 
Counted the inches all the way — 
One and two and three. 

"Oh, you're a Cheshire cat," said she 
Father said, ' ' That 's no sin. ' ; 

Then he nodded and smiled at me — 
Smiled at my three-inch grin. 

Brother suggested I ought to begin 

Trying to trim it down. 
Mother said, "Better a three-inch grin 

Than a little half -inch frown." 

Not mighty deeds make up the sum 
Of happiness below, 
But little acts of kindness 
Which any one may show. 

To do to others as I would 
That they should do to me, 

Will make me honest, kind and good, 
As children ought to be. 

Do your best, your very best, 
And do it every day, 

Little boys and little girls, 
That is the wisest way. 

Kind words are little sunbeams, 

That sparkle as they fall; 
And loving smiles are sunbeams, 

A light of joy to all. 



Opening Exercises for Schools 103 

In sorrow's eye they dry the tear, 

And bring the fainting heart good cheer. 

The fisher who draws in his net too soon, 

Won't have any fish to sell. 
The child who shuts up his book too soon, 

Won't learn any lessons well. 
If you would have your learning stay, 

Be patient — don't learn too fast; 
The man who travels a mile each day, 

Will get round the world at last. 

Do not look for wrong and evil — 

You will find them if you do; 
As you measure for your neighbor, 

He will measure back to you. 
Look for goodness, look for gladness, 

You will meet them all the while; 
If you bring a smiling visage 

To the glass, you meet a smile. 

Suppose your task, my little man, 

Is very hard to get; 
Will it make it any easier 

For you to sit and fret? 
And wouldn't it be wiser, 

Than waiting like a dunce, 
To go to work in earnest 

And learn the thing at once? 

Father, we thank Thee for the night, 
And the pleasant morning light; 
For rest and food and loving care, 
And all that makes our day so fair; 
Help us to do the things we should, 
To be to others kind and good; 
In all we do, and all we say, 
To serve Thee better day by day. 



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104 Opening Exercises for Schools 

A smile, and then two merry eyes, 
To make the pleasantest of skies; 
A laugh — or many, if you please, 
To make the sweetest summer breeze; 
All these, if used well and aright, 
Will even make a dark day bright. 

Little moments make an hour, 
Little thoughts a book; 

Little seeds, a tree or flower; 
Water-drops, a brook; 

Little deeds of faith and love 
Make a home for you above. 

Whoever you are, be noble; 

Whatever you do, do well; 
Whenever you speak, speak kindly; 

Give joy wherever you dwell. 

Sixty seconds make a minute, 
How much good can I do in it? 
Sixty minutes make an hour, 
All the good that's in my power. 
Twenty hours and four, a day, 
Time for sleep and work and play; 
Days, three hundred sixty-five, 
Make a year for me to strive 
Eight good things each day to do, 
That I wise may grow and true. 

There's time for work and a time for play, 

A time for everything good, each day, 

But never a time in this short life 

For quarrels and angry words and strife. 

A crumb will feed a little bird, 
A thought prevent an angry word, 
A seed bring forth full many a flower, 
A drop of rain foretell a shower. 



Opening Exercises for Schools 105 

A little cloud the sun will hide, 
A dwarf may prove a giant's guide, 
A narrow plank a safe bridge form, 
A imile some cheerless spirit warm! 



Every lily in the meadow 

Waits in patience for the rain; 

Every daisy in the shadow 
Waits till sunshine comes again; 

Every birdie in the home nest 
Waits for food, nor waits in vain. 

''Just wait, my brave lad, one moment, I pray. 

Manhood Town lies where? Can you tell the way? 

Oh, by toiling and trying we reach that land— 

A bit with the head, a bit with the hand! 

'Tis by climbing up the steep hill Work, 

'Tis by keeping out of the wide street Shirk, 

'Tis by always taking the weak one's part, 

'Tis by giving the mother a happy heart, 

'Tis by keeping bad thoughts and actions Down — 

Oh, that is the way to Manhood Town! " 

Onward go, forward go, 

Like a soldier true! 
Manfully perform the work 

That is yours to do. 

Nobly think, nobly act, 

In life's endeavor; 
Show a will to care and do. 

Be a coward never! 

Onward go, forward go; 

Be master of your plan; 
Let your golden watchword read, 

* ' I '11 be a working man ! ' ' 



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106 Opening Exercises for Schools 

"I can't" is a sluggard too lazy to work, 
From duty he shrinks, every task he will shirk; 
No bread on his hoard and no meal in his bag, 
His house is a ruin, his coat is a rag. 

Life is called a ladder 

Which we climb round by round, 
We should step up higher, 

Each day above the ground. 

Each noble deed we do, 

Each kind word we say, 
Each trouble we pass through, 

Is a step upon the way. 

All souls have guardian angels that follow them 
As hopes of fathers hover round their sons. 

ier Judd. 



A house is built of bricks and stones, of sills and posts, and piers, 
But a home is built of loving deeds, that stand a thousand years. 

— Nixon Waterman. 

It was only a glad "Good Morning l." 

As she passed along the way, 
But it spread the morning's glory 

Over the livelong day. 

It's great to say "Good Morning," 

It's fine to say " Hello,' ' 
But better still to grasp the hand 

Of a loyal friend, you know. 

A look may be forgotten, 

A word misunderstood, 
But the touch of the human hand 

Is the pledge of brotherhood. 



Opening Exercises for Schools 107 

We are but minutes — little things — 
Each one furnished with sixty wings, 
With which we fly on our unseen track; 
And not a minute ever comes back. 



We are but minutes; yet each one bears 
A little burden of joys and cares; 
Take patiently the minutes of pain — 
The worst of minutes cannot remain. 



We are but minutes; yet we bring 
A few of the drops from pleasure's spring, 
Taste their sweetness while yet we stay — 
It takes but a minute to fly away. 

We are but minutes; use us well; 

For how we are used we must one day tell. 

Who uses minutes has hours to use; 

Who loses minutes whole years must lose. 

"I wish," said lazy little Paul, 

1 ' O how I wish that I, 
Instead of climbing this stone wall, 

Straight over it could fly ! ' ' 
But when old "Brindle's" crumpled horns 

Had tossed him from the ground, 
And o'er the wall, upon some thorn, 

A resting place he found, 
His views completely altered seemed, 

And, trying not to cry, 
He gasped, "I'm sure I never dreamed 

How horrid 'tis to fly ! " 

Be kind and be gentle 

To those who are old, 
For dearer is kindness 

And better than gold. 



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108 Opening Exercises for Schools 

Plump little Baby-clouds, 
Dimpled and soft, 

Kock in their air-cradles 
Swinging aloft. 

Great, snowy Mother-clouds, 
Broad bosoms white, 

Watch o'er the Baby-clouds, 
Slumbering light. 

Tired little Baby-clouds 
Dreaming of fears, 

Turn in their air-cradles, 
Dripping soft tears. 

Great brooding Mother-clouds, 
Watching o'er all, 

Let their warm mother tears 
Tenderly fall. 



A GOOD NAME. 

Children choose it, 
Don't refuse it; 
'Tis a precious diadem; 
Highly prize it, 
Don't despise it; 



Love and cherish, 

Keep and nourish; 
'Tis more precious far than gold; 

Watch and guard it, 

Don't discard it; 
You will need it when you're old. 

If you tried and have not won, 

Never stop for crying; 
All that's great and good is done 

Just by patient trying. 



Opening Exercises for Schools 109 

Though young birds in flying, fall, 

Still their wings grow stronger; 
And the next time they can keep 

Up a little longer. 

Though the sturdy oak has known 

Many a blast that bowed her, 
She has risen again, and grown 

Loftier and prouder. 

If by easy work you beat, 

Who the more will prize you? 
Gaining victory from defeat — 

That's the test that tries you. 

You should make the same use of books that the bee does of 
the flower: he gathers sweets from it but does not injure it. 

A little word in kindness spoken, 

A motion, or a tear, 
Has often healed the heart that's broken, 

And made a friend sincere. 

A word, a look, has crushed to earth 

Full many a budding flower, 
"Which, had a smile but owned its birth, 

Would bless life's darkest hour. 



Then deem it not an idle thing, 

A pleasant word to speak; 
The face you wear, the thoughts you bring, 

A heart may heal or break. 

Sweet love is the sunshine 

That warms into life; 
For only in darkness 

Live hatred and strife. '■ 



110 Opening Exercises for Schools 

Only a drop in the bucket, 
But every drop will tell; 

The bucket would soon be empty 
Without the drop in the well. 

Only a poor little penny; 

It was all I had to give; 
But as pennies make the dollars, 

It may help some cause to live. 

God loveth the cheerful giver, 

Though the gift be poor and small: 

What does He think of His children 
When they never give at all? 

Little things, ay, little things 
Make up the sum of life; 

A word, a look, a single tone, 
May lead to calm a strife. 

A word may part the dearest friends- 
One little, unkind word, 

Which in some light, unguarded hour, 
The heart with anger stirred. 

A look will sometimes send a pang 
Of anguish to the heart: 

A ton© will often cause the tear 
In sorrow's eye to start. 

One little act of kindness done- 
One little kind word spoken — - 

Hath power to make a thrill of joy, 
E'en in a heart that's broken. 

Then let us watch these ' ' little things, ' ' 
And so respect each other, 

That not a word, or look, or tone 
Shall wound a friend or brother. 



Opening Exercises for Schools 111 

Oh, many a shaft, at random sent, 

Finds mark, the archer little meant! 

And many a word at random spoken 

May soothe, or wound, a heart that's broken I 

I live for those who love me, 

Whose hearts are kind and true; 
For the heaven that smiles above me, 

For the good that I can do. 

GEMS FOR THE INTERMEDIATE GRADES. 

If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take 
it away from him. — 'Franklin. 

Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to 
deceive! — Scott. 

"To possess the gift of helpfulness is to be mortgaged to all 
who need." 

Every one owes it to himself to grow. 

To know what to do Is good; to know how to do it is better; 
to know what, how and why, is best. 

Truth is as impossible to be soiled by any outward touch as 
the sunbeam. — Milton. 

He who would eat the kernel must crack the shell.— Plautus. 

Make the truth thine own for truth's sake. — Whittier. 



"Truth is honest, truth is sure, 
Truth is strong and must endure. 



— Bailey, 



Strive never to say, or never to do, 
What is not honest, or strictly true. 

— Cory. 






112 Opening Exercises for Schools 

However things may seem, no evil thing is success and no good 
thing is failure. 

Boys, flying kites, haul in their white-winged birds; 
You can't do that way, when you're flying words. 
Thoughts unexpressed may sometimes fall back dead; 
But God himself can't kill them when once they're said. 

An oath is a vain formality which binds no scoundrel and 
strengthens not the statement of an honest man. 

Sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap 
a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny. — Boardman. 

Unblemished, let me live or die unknown, 
0, grant an honest fame, or grant me none. 

— Pope. 

Work with the heart, and work with the brain, 
Work with the hand and work with the will, 
Step after step we conquer the plain. 

— Mrs. Curtis. 

Eest is not quitting the busy career; 
Best is the fitting of self to its sphere. 

— John Dwight. 

He that swells in prosperity is sure to shrink in adversity. 

Dare to be true, nothing can need a lie; 

A fault which needs it most, grows two thereby. 

— Herbert. 



The greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it. — Emerson. 

We can do more good by being good than in any other way,—* 
Eowland Hill. 



Opening Exercises for Schools 113 

Speak the truth bravely, cost what it may, 
Hiding a -wrong act is never the way. 

— Longfellow. 

Lost yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two 
golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward 
is offered, for they are gone forever. — Horace Mann. 

We should always speak the truth as well as act the truth. — 
Emerson. 

Honor and shame from no condition rise, 
Act well your part; there all the honor lies. 

— Pope. 

Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well. 

When thou art obliged to speak, be sure to speak the truth j 
for equivocating is half way to lying. — Wm. Penn. 

A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the 
wrong, which is but saying, in other words, he is wiser today 
than he was yesterday.— Pope. 

My tongue within my lips I rein, 

For who talks much must talk in vain. — Gay. 

Think for thyself — one good idea , 

But known to be thine own, 
Is better than a thousand gleaned 

From field by others sown. — Wilson. 

Words of kindness we have spoken 
May, when we have passed away, 

Heal, perhaps a spirit broken, 
Guide a brother led astray. 

Teach me to feel another's woe, 

To hide the fault I see: 
That mercy I to others show, 

That mercy show to me. — Pope. 



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114 Opening Exercises for Schools 

Beware of little expense; a small leak will sink a ship. If you 
know how to spend less than you get, you have found the philoso- 
pher 's stone. — Franklin. 

Lives of great men all remind us, 

We can make our lives sublime, 
And departing, leave behind us 

Foot-prints on the sands of time. 

— Longfellow. 

Life should be full of earnest work, 

Our heart undashed by fortune's frown; 

Let perseverance conquer fate 

And merit seize the victor's crown. 

A heart full of thankfulness, 

A thimbleful of care; 
A soul of simple hopefulness,. 

An early morning prayer. 

A smile to greet- the morning with; 

A kind word as the key 
To open the door and greet the day, 

Whate'er it bring to thee. 

A patient trust in Providence, 

To sweeten all the way — 
All these, combined with thoughtfulness, 

Will make a happy day. 

The battle is not to the strong, 

The race not always to the fleet, 
And he who seeks to pluck the stars 

Will lose the jewels at his feet. 

— Phoebe Cary. 

It istt 't the thing you do, dear, 

It's the thing you've left undone, 
That gives you a bit of a heartache, 



Opening Exercises for Schools 115 

At the setting of the sun. 

— Margaret Sangster. 

We live in deeds, not years ; in thoughts, not breaths ; in feelings, 
not in figures on a dial. We should not count time by heart throbs. 
He most lives who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best. 

We get back our mete as we measure; 

We can not do wrong and feel right: 
Nor can we give pain and get pleasure, 

For justice avenges each slight. 

— Alice Cary. 

Time wasted is existence. Time used is life.— Young. 

I will work in my own sphere; nor wish it other than it is. 
This alone is health and happiness; this alone is life. — Long- 
fellow's Hyperion. 

We can never be too careful 

What seeds our hands may sow. 
Love from love is sure to ripen, 

Hate from hate is sure to grow. 

The broom or the spade or the shuttle, that plies 
Its own honest task in its own honest way, 

Serves heaven not less than a star in the skies — 
What more could the Pleiades do than obey? — Sel. 

By one's self is evil done, by one's self one suffers. By one's 
self evil is left undone, and by one's self one is purified. Purity 
and impurity belong to one's self; no one can purify another. — 
Buddhist Scripture. 

Whichever way the wind doth blow, 
Some heart is glad to have it so; 
And blow it east or blow it west, 
The wind that blows, that wind is best. 

— Caroline H. Mason. 



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116 Opening Exercises for Schools 

Nothing great is lightly won; 

Nothing won is lost ; 
Every good deed nobly done 

Will repay the cost. 

Govern the lips 
As they were palace doors, the king within; 
Tranquil and fa^r and courteous be all words 
Which from that presence win. — Arnold 

The stars are tiny daisies high, 

Op'ning and shutting in the sky, 

While daisies are the stars below, 

Twinkling and sparkling as they grow. — Sel. 

Believe not every accusing tongue, 

As most weak people do ; 
But still believe that story wrong 

Which ought not to be true. 

— E. B. Sheridan. 

"And I firmly believe that the more we can laugh 

The stronger we'll be to face sorrow. 
So accept life's worries the least that you can, 

And be sure that you none of them borrow ! ' ' 

Look for goodness, look for ' gladness, 
You will meet them all the while. 

If you bring a smiling visage 
To the glass you meet a smile. — Alice Cary. 

Truth is the end we are seeking; 

Work is the means we employ; 
Duty's the path that leads onward 

To fathomless depths of joy. — D. A. Pingree. 

Heights by great men reached and kept 
Were not attained by sudden flight, 

But they, while their companions slept, 
Were toiling upward in the night. 

— Longfellow. 



Opening Exercises for Schools 117 

Courage, brother! do not stumble, 

Though thy path is dark as night; 
There's a star to guide the humble, 

Trust in God and do the right. — Macleod. 

Work for some good, be it ever so slowly; 
Cherish some flower, be it ever so lowly. 
Labor! all labor is noble and holy; 
Let thy great deed be thy prayer to thy God. 

— F. S. Osgood. 

It pays to give a helping hand 

To eager, earnest youth ; 
To note, with all their waywardness 

Their courage and their truth; 
To strive, with sympathy and love, 

Their confidence to win; 
It pays to open wide the heart 

And ' ' let the sunshine in. ' ' 

It is not so much what you say, 

As the manner in which you say it. 
It is not so much the language you use 

As the tones in which you convey it. 
The words may be mild and fair, 

And the tones may pierce like a dart, 
The words may be soft as the summer air 

And the tones may break the heart. 

One by one the sands are flowing: 

One by one the moments fall; 
Some are coming, some are going, — 

Do not strive to grasp them all. 

One by one the duties wait thee; 

Let thy whole strength go to each; 
Let no future dreams elate thee, 

Learn thou first what these can teach. 

— Adelaide A. Proctor. 



118 Opening Exercises for Schools 

A little spring had lost its way along the grass and fern, 

A passing stranger scooped a well, where weary men might turn; 

He walled it in and hung with care a ladle at the brink; 

He thought not of the deed he did, but judged that toil might drink. 

He passed again, and lo! the well, by summers never dried, 

Had cooled ten thousand parching tongues, and saved a life beside. 

The kindly deeds which long ago 
Cast o'er our lives a crimson glow, 
Do linger in our memory still, 
And oft our hearts with pleasure thrill. 

Sweet courtesies and favors lend 
To life a charm which hath no end; 
No kindliness is ever lost, 
E'en though but little it has cost. 

— Dora D^oon. 

Beautiful faces are those that wear — 
It matters little if dark or fair — 
"Whole-souled honesty printed there. 

Beautiful eyes are those that show, 

Like crystal panes where hearth-fires glow, 

Beautiful thoughts that burn below. 

Beautiful hands are those that do 
"Work that is earnest and brave and true, 
Moment by moment the long day through. 

Beautiful lives are those that bless, — 

Silent rivers of happiness, 

Whose hidden fountains but few may guess. 

— Allen P. Allerton. 

The bravest battle that ever was fought! 

Shall I tell you where and when? 
On the maps of the world you will find it not; 

'Twas fought by the mothers of men. 



Opening Exercises for Schools 119 

Nay, not with cannon, or battle-shot, 

With sword, or nobler pen; 
Nay, not with eloquent word, or thought, 

From mouths of wonderful men. 



But deep in a walled-up woman's heart — 

Of woman that would not yield, 
But bravely, silently bore her part — 

Lo ! there is that battle-field ! 

No marshaling troop, no bivouac song: 

No banner to gleam and wave! 
But oh! these battles they last so long — 

From babyhood to the grave! 

I wouldn't be cross, dear, 'tis never worth while; 

Disarm the vexation by wearing a smile. 

Let hap a disaster, a trouble, a loss, 

Just meet the thing boldly and never be cross. 

I wouldn't be cross, dear, with people at home, 

They love you so fondly; whatever may come, 

You may count on the kinsfolk around you to stand, 

O, loyally true in a brotherly band! 

So, since the fine gold far exceedeth the dross, 

I wouldn't be cross, dear, I wouldn't be cross. 

I wouldn't be cross with a stranger. Ah, no! 

To the pilgrims we meet on the life path we owe 

This kindness, to give them good cheer as they pass, 

To clear out the flint-stones and plant the soft grass. 

No, dear, with a stranger, in trial or loss, 

I perchance might be silent; I wouldn't be cross, 

No bitterness sweetens, no sharpness may heal 

The wound which the soul is too proud to reveal. 

No envy hath peace; by a fret and a jar 

The beautiful work of our hands we may mar. 

Let happen what may, dear, of trouble and loss, 

I wouldn't be cross, love, I wouldn't be cross, 

— Mrs. M. E. Sangster, 



120 Opening Exercises for Schools 

Zealous men and women, strong in their faith in God and the 
right, knowing their duties, and knowing, dare maintain; lovers of 
their country and ready to defend from foes without or foes 
within, — these are the pillars of our strength. — Sanders. 

Precept is instruction written in the sand. The tide Cows 
over it and the record is gone. Example is engraved upon the rock. 
— Channing. 

"Do not ask me why I am working away! " 

Said a cheerful man I met, 
"Who was singing and working the livelong day. 
"Why, I owe the world a living," he'd say, 

"And I'm trying to pay the debt." 

And so he was doing his duty best, 

Trying to give — not get — 
Adding his measure of effort, lest 
He'd soon be owing still more for rest — 

"He was trying to pay his debt." 

And thus he has taught me a lesson true, 

One I shall not forget — 
The world owes me naught for my passing thro ', 
'Tis I owe the world my fare — I do — 

Am I trying to pay the debt? 

In whatever path you go, 
In whatever place you stand, 
Moving swift, or moving slow, 
"With a firm and honest hand, 
Make your mark. 

— David Barker. 

Better than fame is still the wish for fame, 
The constant training for a glorious strife. 

— Lord Lytton. 



Opening Exercises for Schools 121 

Providence furnishes materials, but expects that we should work 
them up ourselves. — Addison. 

Wise men ne'er sit and wail their loss, 
But cheerily seek how to redress their harm. 

— Shakespeare. 

The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you 
can do, well, and doing well whatever you do, without a thought 
of fame. — Longfellow. 

Apart from the woes that are dead and gone 

And the shadow of future care, 
The heaviest yoke of the present hour 

Is easy enough to bear. 

— Alice Gary. 

GEMS FOB THE UPPER GRADES. 

Every time I tell the truth I add to my strength of character. — 
Emerson. 

Change the contents of the heart, and you will alter the drop- 
pings of the mouth. — Spurgeon. 

They are never alone that are accompanied with noble thoughts. 
— Sidney. 

Labor to eep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial 
fire called conscience. — Washington. 

To see what is right and not do it is want of courage. — 
Confucius. 

Excellence comes from toil, from fidelity to purpose, from intelli- 
gent effort. 

Seven hours to law, to soothing slumber seven, 
Ten to the world allot, and all to heaven. 

— Sir. William Jones. 



122 Opening Exercises for Schools 

He who waits to do a great deal of good at once, will never do 
any good. — Dr. Johnson. 

Parsimony toward education is liberality toward crime. — Gov. 
Crittenden. 

I have seldom known any one who deserted truth in trifles, who 
could be trusted in matters of importance. — Tdley. 

For just experience tells, in every soil, 

That those that think must govern those that toil. 

— Goldsmith. 

Love rules the court, the camp, the grove 
And men below and saints above; 
For love is heaven, and heaven is love. 

'Tis wrong to borrow what you can never pay. — Watson. 

Go show the bee that stung your hand, 
The sweetest flower in all the land ; 
Then, from its bosom she will bring 
The honey that will cure the sting. 

—Mrs. S. M. B. Piatt. 

No State is great until its educational facilities are great. — Gov. 
Crittenden. 



One of the illusions is that the present hour is not the decisive 
hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day of 
the year. — Emerson. 

Whene'er a noble deed is wrought, 
Whene'er is spoken a noble thought, 
Our hearts in glad surprise 
To higher levels rise. 

— Santa Filomena. 



Opening Exercises for Schools 123 

Midnight! the outpost of advancing day! 

The frontier town and citadel of night! 
The watershed of Time, from which the streams 

Of yesterday and to-morrow take their way, 
One to the land of promise and of light, 

One to the land of darkness and of dreams. 

— Longfellow. 

Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven, 
Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels. 

— Evangeline. 

God pity the American citizen who does not love the flag; who 
does not see in it the story of our great free institutions, and the 
hope of the home as well as the nation. — Benjamin Harricon. 

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining; 
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining; 
Thy fate is the common fate of all, 
Into each life some rain must fall, 
Some days must be dark and dreary. 

— Longfellow. 

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every 
time we fall. — Confucius. 

Pill up each hour with what will last 

Buy up the moments as they go; 
The life above, when this is past, 

Is the ripe fruit of life below. 

Let a man learn that everything in nature, even motes and 
feathers, go by law and not by luck, and that which he sows he 
reaps. — Emerson. 

Truth is tough. It will, not break, like a bubble, at a touch ; nay, 
you may kick it about all day, like a football, and it will be 
round and full at evening. — 0. W. Holmes. 



124 Opening Exercises for Schools 

Jails and prisons are the complement of schools, so many less 
as you have of the latter, so many more you must have of the 
former. — Horace Mann. 

11 Heaven's gate is shut to him who comes alone; 
Save thou a soul, and it shall have thine own." 

— Edith Holland. 

Kind words produce their own image in men's souls, and a 
beautiful image it is. They soothe and comfort the hearer. They 
shame him out of his unkind feelings. We have not yet begun 
to use them in such abundance as they ought to be used. — Pascal. 

It is not what we earn, but what we save, that makes us rich. 
It is not what we eat, but what we digest, that makes us strong. 
It is not what we read, but what we remember, that makes us 
learned. It is not what we intend, but what we do, that makes 
us useful. It is not a few faint wishes, but a lifelong struggle, 
that makes us valiant. — Anon. 

" Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, 
Only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness ; 

So on the ocean of life we speak and pass one another, 

Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence. ' ' 

Look not mournfully into the past, it cannot come again. Wisely 
improve the present; it is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy 
future without fear and with a manly heart. — Longfellow. 

A pebble thrown into a pond, sends its tiniest ripple to the 
opposite bank. So shall our labors, feeble though they seem, stir 
in the life-blood of our race while it shall inhabit the earth. 
Child, youth, man, thy words are immortal! 

The maelstrom attracts more notice than the quiet fountain; 
a comet more attention than the steady star; but it is better to be 
the fountain than the maelstrom, and the star than the comet, 
following out the sphere and orbit of quiet usefulness in which 
God has placed us. — Br. John Hall. 



Opening Exercises for Schools 125 

Generosity during life is a very different thing from generosity 
in the hour of death; one proceeds from genuine liberality and 
benevolence, the other from pride and fear. — Horace Mann. 

Mourn not for vanished ages, 

With their great, heroic men, 
Who dwell in history's pages, 

And live in the poet's pen; 
For the grandest times are before us, 

And the world is yet to see 
The noblest worth of this old earth 

In the men that are to be. 

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox. 

A taste for books is the pleasure and. glory of my life. I would 
not exchange it for the glory of the Indies. — Gibbons. 

A spirit that from earth had just departed, 

Lingered a moment on its upward way, 
And, looking back, saw, as though broken-hearted, 

Its friends and kindred weeping o 'er its clay. 
1 ' It seems they loved me dearly. Had I known it 

My life had been much happier, ' ' it said. 
"Why only at our parting have they shown it — 

Their fondest kisses keeping for the dead ? ' ' 

— Margaret Eytinge. 

Hark, the world is so loud and books, the movers of the world, 
are so still. — Lytton. 

Books are light-houses built on the sea of time. — Whipple. 

Boys, keep your record clean. — John B. Gough. ■ 

An honest man is the noblest work of God. — Pope. 

Truth is truth whether the individual man believes it or not. — 
Moody. 



126 Opening Exercises for Schools 

The honest man, though e'er sae poor, 
Is king of men for a' thai. — Burns. 

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be 
true to the best one knows.— Farrar. 

He who does nothing for others does nothing for himself. 

How far that little candle throws its beams — 
So shines a good deed in a naughty world. 

— Shakespeare. 

The best portion of a good man's life is his little, nameless, 
unremembered acts of kindness and of love. — Wordsworth. 

"We rise by things that are under our feet, 
By what we have mastered of good or gain, 
By the hopes despoiled and the passions slain 

And the conquered ills that we daily meet. 

— Longfellow. 

This above all, — to thine own self be true; 
And it shall follow as the night the day, 
Thou canst not then be false to any man. 

— Shakespeare. 

Oh, there are looks and tones that dart 
An instant sunshine through the heart ; 
As if the soul that minute caught 
Some treasure it through life had sought. 

— Moore. 

The brave man seeks not popular applause. — Dryden. 

He is not worthy of the honeycomb that shuns the hive because 
the bees leave stings. — Shakespeare. 

The chains of habit are generally too small to be felt until they 
are too strong to be broken. — Johnson. 



Opening Exercises for Schools 127 

Ignorance never settles questions. — Disraeli. 

Learning by study must be won, 
'Twas ne'er entailed from sire to son. 

— Gay. 

A learned man is a tank; a wise man is a spring. — W. B. Alger. 

Attempt the end and never stand to doubt ; 
Nothing's so hard but search will find it out. 

— EorricJc. 

Habits, though in their commencement like the filmy line of 
the spider, trembling at every breeze, may in the end prove as 
links of tempered steel, binding a deathless being to eternal 
felicity or eternal woe. — Mrs. Sigourney. 

I have a firm belief that the rock of our safety as a nation lies in 
the proper education of our population. — Benjamin Harrison. 

Every man must educate himself. His books and teacher are 
but helps; the work is his. — Webster. 

A true test of friendship: To sit or walk with a friend for 
an hour in perfect silence without wearying of one another 's com- 
pany. — Mrs. Mulock-CraiTc. 

If you would live with ease, 

Do what you ought, not what you please. 

— Franklin. 

My dear boy, learn a lesson from the postage stamp; it's use- 
fulness depends upon its ability to stick to one thing until it gets 
there. — Joseph Cliamberlin. 

Be noble; and the nobleness that lies 
In other men sleeping, but never dead, 
Will rise in majesty to meet thine own. 

— Lowell. 



128 Opening Exercises for Schools 

Success is coming up to the level of our best. 

I am what I am because I have been doing what I have been 
doing. 

Truth is the source of every good to gods and men. He who 
expects to be blest and fortunate in this world should partake of it 
from the earliest moment of his life. — Plato. 

Difficulties are but a test of moral grit, and serve to sort out 
the vertebrae from the jellyfish. 

' ' There is no death ! What seems so is transition : 

This life of mortal breath 

Is but a suburb of the life elysian, 

Whose portal we call death." 

— Longfellow. 

Thought takes man out of servitude into freedom. — Emerson. 



The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, 
But in ourselves, that we are underlings. 

— Shakespeare. 

Truth, crushed to earth shall rise again, 

The eternal years of God are hers; 
But error, wounded, writhes in pain, 

And dies among its worshipers. 



•Bryant. 



Don 't laugh at a man bowed in sorrow, 

You know not his cross or his care; 
The sun may shine for him tomorrow, 

Though today it looks gloomy and drear. 
Eemember the words of the Prophet, 

A kind word is not thrown away, 
The humblest may yet be your level. 

Do the good that you can do today. 



Open in tj Exercises for Schools 129 

Habit is a cable; wo weave a thread of it each day, and it be- 
comes so strong we cannot break it. — Horace Mann. 

A good book ; whether a fiction or not, is one that leaves you 
farther on than when you took it up. If, when you drop it, it 
drops you down in the same old spot, with no finer outlook, no 
clearer vision, no stimulated desire for that which is better and 
higher, it is in no sense a good book. — Anna Warner. 

The man who seeks one thing in life, and but one, 
May hope to achieve it before life be done; 
But he who seeks all things, wherever he goes, 
Only reaps from the hopes which around him he sows, 
A harvest of barren regrets. 

— Owen Meredith. 

Every evil to which we do not succumb is a benefactor. As 
the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength and valor of the 
enemy he kills passes into himself, so we gain the strength of the 
temptation we resist.— Emerson. 

Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us 

To see oursels as ithers see us! 

It wad frae mony a blunder free us 

And foolish notion. 
"What airs in dress and gait wad lea' us, 

And e'en devotion. 

— Burns. 

A crust by labor earned is sweeter far than a feast inherited. — 
Dickens. 

Think all you speak; but speak not all you think; 

Thoughts are your own ; your words are so no more. 
Where wisdom steers, wind cannot make you sink: 

Lips never err, where she does keep the door. 

— Delaune. 

There's nothing so kingly as kindness, 
And nothing so royal as truth. 



130 Opening Exercises for Schools 

Cowards die many times before their death; 
The valiant never taste of death but once. 

— Shakespeare. 

Yes, there is a choice in books as in friends ; and the mind sinks 
or rises to the level of its habitual society — for they, too, insensibly 
give away their own nature to the mind that converses with them — 
Holmes. 

We first make our habits and then our habits make us. — Dryden. 

We sleep but the loom of life never stops and the pattern which 
was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up 
tomorrow. — Beecher. 

The habits of time are the souPs dress for eternity. — Cheever. 

Bad habits are as infectious by example as the plague itself by 
contact. — Fielding. 

Be firm! One constant element in luck 
Is genuine, solid, old Teutonic pluck. 

— Holmes. 

The men who try to do something and fail are infinitely better 
than those who try to do nothing and succeed. — -Lloyd Jones. 

Books should to one of these four ends conduce — 
For wisdom, piety, delight or use. 

— Deuham. 

God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the distant 
and the dead and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.— 
Channing. 

Heaven is not gained at a single bound, 
But we build the ladder by which we rise, 
From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies, 

And we mount to its summit round by round. 

— Holland. 



Opening Exercises for Schools 131 

Plow deep while sluggards sleep, 

And you shall have corn to sell and to keep. 

— Franklin. 

There is no substitute for thoroughgoing, ardent, sincere earnest- 
ness. — Dickens. 

And thou, O Lord ! by whom are seen 

Thy creatures as they be, 
Forgive me if too close I lean 

My human heart on Thee. 

— Whittier. 

No soul is desolate so long as there is a human being for whom 
it can feel trust and reverence. — George Eliot. 

Things don't turn up in the world unless somebody turns them 
up.— Garfield. 

Cigarettes in boyhood are about as useful in building up a 
strong body as dynamite would be in building a house. — W. F? 
Crafts. 

I hold it truth with him who sings 
To one clear harp in divers tones, 
That men may rise on stepping stones 

Of their dead selves to higher things. 

—Tennyson. 

He prayeth best who loveth best 

All things both great and small; 
For the great God who loveth us, 

He made and loveth all. 

— Coleridge. 

To God, thy country, and thy friend be true. — Vaughan. 

A sorrow shared is halved; a joy divided is doubled. — G. W. 
Eoss. 



132 Opening Exercises for Schools 

Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a 
book — a message to us from the dead — from human soul whom we 
never saw, perhaps, thousands of miles away; and yet these on 
those little sheets of paper speak to us, amuse us, terrify us, com- 
fort us, open their hearts to us as brothers. — Gh*rUs'Kingsley. 

So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 

So near is God to man, 
"When duty whispers low, "thou must, ,, 

The youth replies ' ' I can ! ' ' 

Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing 
army. If we retrench the wages of the schoolmaster we must raise 
those of the recruiting officer. — Edward Everett. 

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, 
"Where wealth accumulates, and men decay; 
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade; 
A breath can made them, as a breath has made ; 
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, 
"When once destroyed, can never be supplied. 

— Goldsmith. 



Education should give the student a mastery of the printed page, 
and make known to him the message of star, rock, flower, bird, 
painting and symphony. Education should also help him to find his 
work, render his meed of service, and feel his personal responsi- 
bility. 

The place to take the true measure of a man is not in the market- 
place nor in the amen corner, nor in the fortune field or forum, 
but in his own home. There he lays aside his mask and you learn 
whether he is an imp or an angel, king or cur, hero or humbug. 
If his babies dread his homecoming and his better half swallows 
her heart every time she asks for a dollar, he is a fraud of the 
first water, even though he prays night and morning till he shakes 
the eternal hills. — Sam Jones. 



Opening Exercises for Schools 133 

"Thou, too, sail on, O ship of State I 

Sail on, O Union, strong and great! 
Humanity with all its fears, 
"With all the hopes of future years, 

Is hanging breathless on thy fate ! ' ' 

"I will work in my own sphere, nor wish it other than it is. 
This alone is health and happiness ; this alone is life. ' ' 

"Believe me, the talent of success is nothing more than doing 
what you can do well;, and doing well whatever you do, without 
a thought of fame." 

"If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should 
find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all 
hostility." 

"In character, in manners, in style, in all things, the supreme 
excellence is simplicity. ' ' 

God give us men! A time like this demands 

Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and reac'y hands; 

Men whom the lust of office does not kill; 

Men whom the spoils of office can not buy; 
Men who possess opinions and a will; 

Men who have honor, — men who will not lie; 
Men who can stand before a demagogue, 

And blight his treacherous flatteries without winking! 
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog 

In public duty and private thinking: 
For while the rabble, with their thumb worn creeds, 
Their large professions, and their little deeds, 
Mingle in selfish strife, lo! Freedom weeps, 
Wrong rules the land, and waiting Justice sleeps. 

— J. G. Holland. 

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, 
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side. 

— Lowell. 



134 Opening Exercises for Schools 



New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good 

uncouth ; 
They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of 

Truth. 

— Lowell. 

Beck not for what the past has done ; 

Lure not the future's mystic vow; 
The past is gone — the present won, 

The time to strike is now. 

f 'I ought to love my country, 

The land in which I live; 
Yes, I am very sure my heart 

Its truest love should give. 

' ' For if I love my country, 

I '11 try to be a man 
My country may be proud of; 

And if I try, I can. 

1 ' She wants men brave and noble, 

She needs men brave and kind, 
My country needs that I should be 

The best man she can find." 

Be noble— that is more than wealth; 

Do right — that's more than place; 
Then in the spirit there is health, 

And gladness in the face. 

— George Macdonald. 

The republic relies upon the intelligent strength and responsi- 
bility of each citizen, and most of all upon the power of truth. 
. . . I doff my hat to every barefoot boy I meet. I do not 
know what possibilities may be buttoned up in his ragged jacket. 
The children of today will be the architects of our country's des- 
tiny. — Garfield. 



Opening Exercises for Schools 135 

"There is no American boy, however poor, however humble, 
orphan though he may be, that, if he have a clear head, a true 
heart, a strong arm, may not rise through all grades of society, 
and become the crown, the pillar of the State." 

The man who for party forsakes righteousness goes down, and 
the armed battalions of God march over him. — Phillips. 

"As the colors of the rainbow 

Make the one uncolored beam, 
So the Universal changes 

Make the One Eternal Dream. 

"And the dream is all within you, 

And the dreamer waiteth long 
For the morning to awake him 

To the living thought and strong. 

"Dwell in thought upon the grandest 

And the grandest you shall see, 
Fix your mind upon the highest 

And the highest you shall be. ' ' 

— Addison Eiokox. 

GIVE. 

Give the glad hand to your brother today; 

Lift with your thoughts the dark sky; 
Send words of cheer to the sad far away; 

Buds sleep 'neatb snows that drift high. 
Roses and violets hidden may be, 
But they bloom when warm zephyrs blow over the lea. 

Give the glad hand to the weary and worn; 

Smile on the sin-sick and lame; 
God knows the griefs of the heart that is torn; 

Love will the fallen reclaim. 
Eoses and violets hidden may be, 
But they bloom when warm zephyrs blow over the lea. 

— Minnie E. Hays. 



136 Opening Exercises for Schools 

Nothing on earth can smile but man! Gems may flash reflected 
light, but what is a diamond-flash compared to an eye-flash and a 
mirth-flash? Flowers cannot smile; this is a charm that even they 
cannot claim. It is the prerogative of man; it is the color which 
love wears, and cheerfulness, and joy — these three. It is a light in 
the windows of the face, by which the heart signifies it is at home 
and waiting. A face that cannot smile is like a bud that cannot 
blossom, and dries up on the stalk. Laughter is day, and sobriety 
is night, and a smile is the twilight that hovers gently between 
both — more bewitching than either. — Henry Ward Beecher. 

HOW TO BE CHEERFUL. 

Refuse to think of things that hurt, but turn the mind resolutely* 
to the cheerful things that come your way. A cat will always 
choose to lie on the sunny side of the room. You can choose what 
kind of things you will allow yourself to think about. Try. Seek 
to find the good in everything. Do not magnify evil. A poor 
fellow was run over by a train, and one of his legs was severed 
from his body. "Thank God, " he gasped, "it is the one I have 
rheumatism in." He found the only ray of light. Think of all 
your blessings. 

An aged soldier, with his hair snow white, 
Sat looking at the night. 

A busy, shining angel came with things 
Like chevrons on his wings. 

He said, "The evening detail has been made — 
Eeport to your brigade." 

The soldier heard the message that was sent, 
Then rose and died and went. 

— Selection from ' ' Ironquill. ' ' 

Till the mountains are worn out and the rivers forget to flow — 
till the clouds are weary of replenishing springs, and the springs 
forget to gush and the rills to sing, shall their names be kept 
fresh with reverent honor, which are inscribed upon the book of 
National Eemembrance! — Henry Ward Beecher. 



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Songs of All Nations. A Story of Southern Italy. Pappina, a little Neapol 
itan girl, is the heroine. The scenes are laid in Naples, The Valley of 
Pompeii, Amalfi, Sorrento, and the beautiful coast towns of Italy. The 
story is a pathetic recital of how Pappina was sold by her father to the cruel 
owner of the Punchinellos, Giuseppe by name. Her many trials and theii 
happy outcome are told of in a way that holds the interest of the reader and 
imparts much valuable information about the habits and customs of the peo- 
ple. Pappina is one of the quaintest and most fascinating little heroines a 
child's story has ever had since Mrs. Burnett ceased writing of Sarah Crewes. 
Mrs. Davis is to be congratulated on the literary style with which she has 
written "The Punchinellos." Illustrated with reproductions from photo- 
graphs. Cloth, 171 pages. Price, 40 cents. 

LITTLE PEOPLE OF THE SNOW. For Third and Fourth Grades. By 
Mary Muller. Away up in the North Land live the Eskimos, or the Little 
People of the Snow. This book tells in a fascinating way the story of Eskimo 
life, ever interesting to all children. Cloth, 109 pages. Price, 35 cents. 

LITTLE PEOPLE OF JAPAN. By Mary Muller. In the story of the 
birth and surroundings and growth of Kaga, a Japanese boy, the author 
gives children an interesting insight into the customs, dress and child-tales of 
this notable people. Cloth, 193 pages. Price, 40 cents. 

WRETCHED FLEA, A CHINESE BOY. Miss Muller has a charming 
way of telling about little folks, for little folks. In the story of Wretched 
Flea she tells of the home life of a typical Chinese boy, beginningwith his 
birth, his surroundings as a baby, as a school boy, as a worker on his father's 
tea farm, as a young man attending college, and his early manhood. Illus- 
trated, cloth, 100 pages. Price, 35 cents. 

AKIMAKOO, AN AFRICAN BOY. By Mary Muller. The scene is laid 
in the wilds of Africa. Akimakoo is the son of the ruler of a strong tribe of 
of the wilds of Africa. He is ambitious to become a great hunter. In tell- 
ing the story of the attaining of his wishes, descriptions are given of the peo- 
ple, their habits and productions, etc. Cloth, 171 pages. Price, 35 cents. 

MUSTAFA, THE EGYPTIAN BOY. By Laura B. Starr. A fascinating 
story of an Egyptian boy, showing the customs of the Egyptians from the 
time of a boy's birth to manhood, the boy's babyhood, his clothes, his prayers, 
his school and occupations, the practices of the Mohammedans, the climate 
and productions of the country, the wonderful Nile, and much else of great 
interest. Cloth, 146 pages. Price, 40 cents. 



A. Flanagan Company, Chicago 




Notable 
New Publications 



4i 




HOMES OF THE WORLD'S BABIES. By Elizabeth E. Scantle- 
bury. A book of paper cuttings with numerous silhouette designs, de- 
picting the home life, manners, and dress of the little children who 
live in other countries. Accompanying these are charming, descrip- 
tive stories written with painstaking accuracy, which with the paper 
cuttings are meant as a help for primary teachers in interesting their 
pupils in the application of geography. Contrasting pictures are drawn 
through the study of food, shelter and clothing— fundamental wants 
common to all — showing how these are supplied under different con- 
ditions, the influence of climate upon dress, etc. Eight different types 
are developed and 42 silhouette illustrations are furnished, v 60 large 
pages. Board covers. Price, 50 cents. 

SMALL GARDENS FOR SMALL GARDENERS. By Lillian C. 
Flint. There is a tendency — a most wholesome one indeed — to get 
back to nature and the soil. Although this book is intended as an 
encouragement to little hands, it is likewise a teacher's book, or any 
one else's book, if that any one else is at all interested in what may 
be done with the wild blossoms from the woods and with the seeds that 
grow without much tending. Thirty-six chapters, discussing as many 
plants and flowers. 50 illustrations. 118 pages. Cloth. Price, 50 cents. 
PROOF OF DESIGN IN CREATION. By Marcus 'A. Kavanagh. 
This book attempts to answer the oft-propounded query: "Oh, if a 
man die, shall he live again?" or "What purpose is life and is it worth 
the living?" It is a masterful exposition of the various theories of 
life and a reply to Darwinian origin and evolution, Huxleyism, Haeck- 
elism, and other scientific "isms," which at one time or another were 
supposed to have solved the beginning of life and its subsequent evo- 
lution. 31 pages. Paper. Price, 15 cents. 

THE RIOT IN TOYLAND: SOME OF OUR BIRDS. A bright 
Christmas story, and a nature reader, for third and fourth grades. 
Each has 32 pages. Paper. Price, each, 6 cents; per dozen, 60 cents. 
MISS ALCOTTS GIRLS: MISS ALCOTT'S BOYS. Two new lit- 
tle readers for fourth and fifth grades. Each has 32 pages. Paper. 
Price, each, 6 cents; per dozen, 60 cents. 



A. FLANAGAN COMPANY 



CHICAGO 



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